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A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
THE STORY OF
SPAIN
BRIEFLY TOLD
BY ^
MARY PLATT PARMELE
Author of "France," "England," "United States,"
"Germany," "Who, When, and What?" etc.
PUBLISHED FOR THE
BAY VIEW READING CIRCLE
Central Office, Flint, Mich.
1898
9857
Copyright, 1898,
BY
MARY PLATT PARMELE.
TWOCOPIEoRECtlVED.
press of the
Continental Publishing Co.»
25 Park Place, New York.
PREFACE.
In presenting this book to the public the
author can only reiterate what she has already
said in works of a similar kind: that she has
tried to exclude the mass of confusing details
which often make the reading of history a
dreary task ; and to keep closely to those facts
which are vital to the unfolding of the narra-
tive. This is done under a strong conviction
that the essential facts in history are those
which reveal and explain the development of
a nation, rather than the incidents, more or
less entertaining, which have attended such
development. And also under another con-
viction: that a little, thoroughly compre-
hended, is better than much imperfectly
remembered and understood.
M. P. P.
New Yo-ry.. June is, 1898.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Ancient Iberia — The Basques — The Keltiberians —
The Phenicians — Cadiz Founded, . . . i
CHAPTER n.
Struggle between Phenicians and Assyrians —
Founding of Carthage — Decline of Phenicia —
Rise of Roman Power — First Punic War, . 9
CHAPTER in.
Hamilcar — Hannibal — Siege and Fall of Saguntum
— Rome Invades Spain — Scipio's Policy — Cadiz,
(Gades) Surrendered to the Romans — By What
Steps Iberia Became Spain — Fall of Carthagin-
ian Power — How Spain Became a Roman
Province, 15
CHAPTER IV.
Sertorius — Story of the White Hind — Rome Fights
Her Own Battles on Spanish Soil — Battle of
Munda — Csesar Declared Dictator — The Ides of
March — Octavius Augustus — Spain Latinized —
Four Hundred Years of Peace, . . . . - 24 ;
Vlll CONTENTS,
CHAPTER V.
PAGE
Northern Races in the History of Civilization —
Roman Empire Expiring — Ataulfus — Attila and
the Htms — Theodoric — Evaric Completes Con-
quest of Spanish Peninsula — Europe Teuton-
ized — Difference between Anglo-Saxon and
Latin Races, 30
CHAPTER VI.
Ulfilas — Arianism — The Spanish Language — Brun-
hilde— Leovigild — His Son's Apostasy — Arian-
ism Ceases to be the Established Religion of
Spain, 39
CHAPTER Vn.
Toledo — Church of Santa Maria — Wamba, . . 45
CHAPTER VHL
Decline of Visigoths — Roderick — Count Julian's
Treachery — Mahommedanism — Tarif — Proph-
ecy Found in the Enchanted Tower — Tarik —
Roderick's Defeat and Death — Moslem Empire
Established in Spain, 50
CHAPTER IX.
Musa's Dream of European Conqtiest — Charles Mar-
tel— Characteristics of Mahommedan Rule —
Mission of the Saracen in Europe — The Germ
of a Christian Kingdom in the North of
Spain, . , .58
CONTENTS, IX
CHAPTER X.
PAGE
Pelayo and the Cave of Covadonga — Alfonso I. —
Berbers and Arabs at War on African Coast —
War Extends to Spain — The Omeyyad Khalifs
Superseded by the Abbasides — Abd-er-Rah-
man — Omeyyad Dynasty Established at Cor-
dova— Ineffectual Attempt of the Abbasides to
Overthrow Abd-er-Rahman— Character of This
Conqueror, ........ 64
CHAPTER XI.
Charlemagne — Battle of Roncesvalles, . . .69
CHAPTER XII.
Conditions after Death of Abd-er-Rahman — Abd-
er-Rahman II. — Arab Refinements — Eulogius
and the Christian Martyrs — Abd-er-Rahman
III.— A Khalifate~At Cordova— The Great
Mosque— The City of "The Fairest "—Death
of Abd-er-Rahman III., 72
CHAPTER XIII.
Rough Cradle of a Spanish Nationality in the
Asturias — Alfonso III. and His Hidalgos and
Dons — Guerrilla Warfare with Moors — Jeal-
ousies and Strife between Christian Kingdoms —
Civil War — Almanzor — Ruin of Christian State
Seemed Imminent — Death of Almanzor — Berber
Revolt — Anarchy in Moorish State — A Khalif
Begging a Crust of Bread — Berbers Destroy
Cordova — Library Burned — City of The Fairest
a Ruin — Asturias — Leon and Castile United —
Alfonso VI. — The Cid— Triumph of Christians —
X CONTENTS.
PAGE
Moors Ask Aid of the Almoravides — Christians
Driven Back — Death of the Cid — A Dynasty of
the Almoravides — The Alhomades — The Great
Mahdi — Moorish People Become Subject to
Emperor of Morocco — His Designs upon
Europe — The Pope Proclaims a Crusade — ,
Alhomades Driven out of Spain by Christians
— Moorish Kingdom Reduced to Province of
Granada, 78
CHAPTER XIV.
European Conditions in Thirteenth Century —
Visigoth Kings Recover Their Land — Its
Changed Conditions — Effect of Arab Civiliza-
tion upon Spanish Nation — Fernando III. —
Spain Draws into Closer Companionship with
European States — Alfonso X. — Spain Becoming
Picturesque — The Bull-Fight — Beautiful Gra-
nada— The Alhambra, 87
CHAPTER XV.
Perpetual Civil War between Spanish States — Cas-
tile and Aragon Absorb the Others and in Con-
flict for Supremacy — Pedro the Cruel — The
Black Prince His Champion against Aragon —
John of Gaunt — His Claim upon the Throne of
Castile — His Final Compromise — Political Con-
ditions Contrasted with Those of Other
States, 94
CHAPTER XVI.
Death of Juan II. — Enrique IV. — Isabella — Her Mar-
riage with Ferdinand of Aragon — Isabella
CONTENTS. XI
PAGE
Crowned Queen of Castile — Ferdinand, King of
Aragon — The Two Crowns United — Character-
istics of the Two Sovereigns — The Inquisition
Created — Jews Driven out of the Kingdom —
Abdul- Hassan's Defiance — Zahara — Family
Troubles at the Alhambra — Ayesha and Boab-
dil — Alhama Captured by Ferdinand — Boabdil
Supplants His Father — Massacre of the Aben-
cerrages — Granada Besieged — Its Capitulation
— Moorish Rule Ended in Spain, . . . loo
CHAPTER XVII.
Columbus and Isabella — Isabella's Private Griefs —
Her Death — Charles, King under a Regency —
Charles Elected Emperor of Germany — Spain
during His Reign — Cruelties in the East and
in the West — Vain Struggle with Protestantism
—Abdication and Death of Charles, . . . io8
CHAPTER XVIII.
Philip II. — Union of Spain and Portugal — The Duke
of Alva in the Netherlands — War with Eng-
land— Spanish Armada Destroyed — Death of
Philip II. — Spain's Decline — Glory of the Name
Castilian, 117
CHAPTER XIX.
Philip III. — Rebellion of the Moriscos — Last of the
Moors Conveyed to African Coast — Don Quixote
— Philip IV. — Louis XIV. Marries Spanish In-
fanta— A Diminishing Kingdom — Carlos II. —
First Collision between Anglo-Saxon and
Spaniard in America — Close of Hapsburg Dy-
nasty in Spain, 125
Xll CONTENTS,
CHAPTER XX.
PAGE
New European Conditions— Louis XIV. — War of
the "Spanish Succession" — Marlborough
Checks Louis at Blenheim — Archduke Aban-
dons Sovereignty in Spain — Peace of Utrecht
— Further Dismemberment of Spain — Gibraltar
Passes to England — Bourbon Dynasty — Com-
mences with Philip V. — Ferdinand VL — Carlos
in. — Expulsion of the Jesuits, .... 131
CHAPTER XXI.
A Dismantled Kingdom — Spanish-American Colo-
nies— England and France at War over Ameri-
can Boundaries — Spain the Ally of France —
Loss of Some of Her West India Islands, and
Capture of Havana and Manila by British —
Florida Given in Exchange for Return of Con-
quered Territory — Growing Irritiation against
England — France Aids American Colonies in
War with England — Spain's Satisfaction at
Their Success — Its Effect in Peru — Revolution
in France — Rapid Rise of Napoleon — Carlos IV.
Removed and Joseph Bonaparte King — Spain
Joins Napoleon in War against England — Tra-
falgar— Arthur Wellesley — Joseph Flees from
His Kingdom, 137
CHAPTER XXII.
Liberal Sentiment Developing — Constitution of
1 812 — Ferdinand VI. and Reactionary Meas-
ures — Revolt of all the Spanish- American
Colonies — The Holy Alliance — The Monroe
Doctrine — Revolution in Spain — Spain under
CONTENTS. Xlll
PAGE
the Protectorate of the Holy Alliance — Ferdi-
nand Reinstated — Two Political Parties — Six
Spanish-American Colonies Freed, . . . 144
CHAPTER XXHI.
The Salic Law and the Princess Isabella— The
Carlists — Regency of Christine — Isabella II. —
Her Expulsion from Spain — Amadeo — An Era
of Republicanism — Castelar — Alfonso XII. Re-
called— His Brief Reign and Death — Alfonso
XIII., 150
CHAPTER XXIV.
Birth of an Insurgent Party in Cuba — Ten Years'
War — Impossible Reforms Promised — Revolu-
tion Started by Jose Marti, 1895 — Attitude of
the American Government — General Weyler's
Methods — Effect upon Sentiment in America —
Destruction of the Battle-Ship Maine — Verdict
of Court of Inquiry — War Declared between
Spain and America — The Approaching End, . 154
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
CHAPTER I.
No name is more fraught with picturesque
and romantic interest than that of the '' Span-
ish Peninsula."
After finishing this rare bit of handiwork
nature seems to have thrown up a great
ragged wall, stretching from sea to sea, to pro-
tect it; and the Pyrenees have stood for ages
a frowning barrier, descending toward France
on the northern side from gradually decreas-
ing heights — but on the Spanish side. in wild
disorder, plunging down through steep
chasms, ravines, and precipices — with sharp
cliffs towering thousands of feet skyward,
which better than standing armies protect the
sunny plains below.
But the '' Spanish Peninsula,'' at the time
we are about to consider, was neither '' Span-
ish " nor was it a peninsula. At the dawn
2 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
of history this sunny corner of Europe was
known as Iberia, and its people as Iberians,
Time has efifaced all positive knowledge of
this aboriginal race; but they are believed to
have come from the south, and to have been
allied to the Libyans, who inhabited the
northern coast of Africa. In fact, Iberi in
the Libyan tongue meant freeman; and Ber-
ber, which was the plural form of that word,
was the term by which all of these western
peoples were known to the Ancient Egyp-
tians.
But it is suspected that the Iberians found
it an easy matter to flow into the land south
of the Pyrenees, and that they needed no
boats for the transit. There has always ex-
isted a tradition of the joining of the two con-
tinents, and now it is believed by geologists
that an isthmus once really stretched across
to the African coast at the narrowest point of
the Straits, at a time when the waters of a
Mediterranean gulf, and the waters flowing
over the sands of Sahara, together found their
outlet in the Indian Ocean.
There is also a tradition that the adventu-
rous Phenicians, who are known to have been
in Iberia as early as 1300 b. c, cut a canal
A STIORT^ HISTORY OF SPAIN. 3
through the narrow strip of land, and then
built a bridge across the canal. But a bridge
was a frail link by which to hold the mighty
continents together. The Atlantic, glad of
such an entrance to the great gulf beyond,
must have rushed impetuously through,
gradually widening the opening, and thus, at
last, permanently severed Europe and Africa;
drained the Sahara dry; transformed the
Mediterranean gulf into a Mediterranean Sea;
and created a *' Spanish Peninsula."
How long this fair Peninsula was the un-
disturbed home of the Iberians no one knows.
Behind the rocky ramparts of the Pyrenees
they may have remained for centuries uncon-
scious of the Aryan torrent which was flood-
ing Western Europe as far as the British Isles.
Nothing has been discovered by which we
may reconstruct this prehistoric people and
(perhaps) civilization. But their physical
characteristics we are enabled to guess; for
just as we find in Cornwall, England, linger-
ing traces of the ancient Britons, so in the
mountain fastnesses of northern Spain linger
the Basques, who are by many supposed to be
the last survivors of that mysterious primitive
race.
4 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
The language of the Basques bears no re-
semblance to any of the Indo-European, nor
indeed to any known tongue. It is so diffi-
cult, so intricate in construction, that only
those who learn it in infancy can ever master
it. It is said that, in Basque, '' you spell Solo-
mon, and pronounce it Nebuchadnezzar."
Its antiquity is so great that one legend calls
it the '* language of the angels," and another
says that Tubal brought it to Spain before the
lingual disaster at Babel! And still another
relates that the devil once tried to learn it,
but that, after studying it for seven years and
learning only three words, he gave it up in
despair.
A language which, without literature, can
so resist change, can so persist unmodified by
another tongue spoken all around and about
it, must have great antiquity; and there is
every reason to believe that the Basque is a
survival of the tongue spoken by the primi-
tive Iberians, before the Kelts began to flow
over and around the Pyrennees ; and also that
the physical characteristics of this people are
the same as those of their ancient progenitors;
small-framed, dark, with a faint suggestion of
the Semitic in their swarthy faces.
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 5
We cannot say when it occurred, but at last
the powerful, fair-haired Kelts had sur-
mounted the barrier and were mingled with
this non-Aryan people, and the resulting race
thus formed was known to antiquity as the
Keltiberians.
It is probable that the rugged Kelt easily
absorbed the race of more delicate type, and
made it, in religion and customs, not unhke
the Keltic Aryan in Gaul. But the physical
characteristics of the other and primitive race
are indelibly stamped upon the Spanish peo-
ple; and it is probably to the Iberian strain in
the blood that may be traced the small, dark
type of men which largely prevails in Spain,
and to some extent also in central and south-
ern France.
But the Keltiberians were Keltic in their
religion. There are now in Spain the usual
monuments found wherever Druid worship
prevailed. Huge blocks of stone, especially
in Cantabria and Lusitania (Portugal), stand-
ing alone or in circles, tell the story of Druidi-
cal rites, and of the worship of the ocean, the
wind, and the thunder, and of the placating of
the powers of nature by human sacrifices.
The mingling of the Kelts and the Iberians
6 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
in varying proportions in different parts of
Spain, and in some places (as among the
Basques) their minghng not at all, produced
that diversity of traits which distinguished the
AsHirians in the mountain gorges from their
neighbors the Cantabrians, and both these
from the Catahnians in the northeast and the
Gallicians on the northwest coast, and from
the Lusitanians, where now is Portugal; and
still more distinguished the Basques, in the
rocky ravines of the Pyrenees, from each and
all of the others. And yet these unlike mem-
bers of one family were collectively known as
Keltiberians.
While this race — hardy, temperate, brave,
and superstitious — was leading its primitive
life upon the Iberian peninsula, while they
were shooting arrows at the sky to threaten
the thunder, drawing their swords against the
rising tide, and prizing iron more dearly than
their abundant gold and silver, because they
could hammer it into hooks, and swords, and
spears — there had long existed in the East a
group of wonderful civilizations: the Egyp-
tian, hoary with age and steeped in wisdom
and in wickedness; the Chaldeans, who, with
'' looks commercing with the skies," were the
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 7
fathers of astronomy; the Assyrians and
Babylonians^ with their wonderful cities of
Nineveh and Babylon, and the Phenicians, with
their no less famous cities of Sidon and Tyre.
Sidon, which was the more ancient of these
two, is said to have been founded by Sidon,
the son of Canaan, who was the great-grand-
son of Noah.
Of all these nations it was the Phenicians
who were the most adventurous. They were
a Semitic people, Syrian in blood, and their
home was a narrow strip of coast on the east
of the Mediterranean, where a group of free
cities was joined into a confederacy held to-
gether by a strong national spirit.
Of these cities Sidon was once the head,
but in time Tyre eclipsed it in splendor, and
writers, sacred and profane, have sung her
glories.
These Phenicians had a genius for com-
merce and trade. They scented a bargain
from afar, and knew how to exchange '' their
broidered work, and fine linen, and coral, and
agate" (i Kings xxvii. i6), their glassware
and their wonderful cloths dyed in Tyrian
scarlet and purple, for the spices and jewels
of the East, and for the gold and silver
8 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
and the ivory and the ebony of the south
and west.
Their ships were coursing the Red Sea and
the Persian Gulf and bringing back treasures
from India and searching every inlet in the
Mediterranean, and finally, either through the
canal they had cut, or the straits it had made,
they sailed as far as the British Isles and
brought back tin.
But the gold and silver of the Iberian
Peninsula were more alluring than the spices
of India or the tin of Britain. So upon the
Spanish coast they made permanent settle-
ments and built cities. As early as iioo B. c.
they had founded beyond the '' Pillars of
Hercules,'' the City of Gades (Cadiz), a walled
and fortified town, and had taught the Kelt-
iberians how to open and work their gold and
silver mines systematically; and in exchange
they brought an old civilization, with new
luxuries, new ideas and customs into the lives
of the simple people.
But they bestowed something far beyond
this — something more enriching than silver
and gold, — an alphabet, — and it is to the
Phenicians that we are indebted for the alpha-
bet now in use throughout the civilized world.
CHAPTER 11.
Such an extension of power, and the acqui-
sition of sources of wealth so boundless, ex-
cited the envy of other nations.
The Greeks are said to have been in the
Iberian peninsula long before the fall of Troy,
where they came with a fleet from Zante, in
the Ionian Sea, and in memory of that place,
called the city they founded Zacynthus, which
name in time became Saguntum. Now they
sent more expeditions and founded more
cities on the Spanish coast; and the Babylo-
nians, and the Assyrians, and, at a later time,
the Persians and the Greeks, all took up arms
against these insatiate traders.
Phenician supremacy was not easily main-
tained with so many jealous rivals in the field,
and it was rudely shaken in 850 B. c, when
" The Assyrians came down like a wolf on the fold,
Their cohorts all gleaming with purple and gold,
and the Phenician power was partially broken
at its source in the East.
It is with thrilling interest that we read
lo A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
Isaiah's prophecy of the destruction of Tyre,
which was written at this very time. For the
Phenicians were the Canaanites of Bible his-
tory, and '' Hiram King of Tyre " was their
king; and his ''navy," which, together with
Solomon's '' came once in three years from
Tarshish/' was their navy; and Tarshish was
none other than Tartessus, their own prov-
ince, just beyond Gibraltar on the Spanish
coast. Nor is it at all improbable that Span-
ish gold was used to adorn the temple which
the great Solomon was building, (i Kings
ix., X.) Shakspere, who says all things better
than anyone else, makes Othello find in the
fatal handkerchief '' confirmation strong as
proofs from holy writ." Where can be found
'' confirmation " stronger than these " proofs
from holy writ"? And where a more mag-
nificent picture of the luxury, the sumptuous
Oriental splendor of this nation at that period,
than in Ezekiel, chapters xxvii., xxviii.?
What an eloquent apostrophe to Tyre —
" thou that art situate at the entry of the sea,
a merchant of the people, for many isles.'' —
'' With thy wisdom and with thine under-
standing thou hast gotten thee riches," and,
*' by thy great wisdom and by thy trafUck hast
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. II
thou increased, and thine heart is lifted up."
And then follows the terrible arraignment —
'' because of the iniquity of thy trafficky And
then the final prediction of ruin — •" I will
bring thee to ashes upon the earth "; '' thou
shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any
more." Where in any literature can we find
such lurid splendor of description, and such
a powerful appeal to the imagination of the
reader! And where could the student of his-
tory find a more graphic and accurate pic-
ture of a vanished civilization !
In 850 B. c, the same year in which the
Assyrians partly subjugated the Phenicians in
the East, the city of Carthage was founded
upon the north coast of Africa, and there com-
menced a movement, with that city as its cen-
ter, which drew together all their scattered
possessions into a Punic confederacy. This
was composed of the islands of Sardinia, Cor-
sica, part of Sicily, the Balearic Isles, and the
cities and colonies upon the Spanish Peninsula
and African coast. As the power of this con-
federacy expands, the name Phenician passes
away and that of Carthaginian takes its place
in history.
Carthage became a mighty city, and con-
12 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
trolled with a strong hand the scattered
empire which had been planted by the
Syrian tradesmen. Carthaginian merchants
and miners were in Tartessus, and were plant-
ing cities and colonies throughout the penin-
sula, and a torrent of Carthaginian life was
thus pouring into Spain for many hundred
years, and the blood of the two races must
have freely mingled.
There are memorials of this time now ex-
isting, not only in Phenician coins, medals,
and ruins, but in the names of the cities.
Barcelona, named after the powerful family of
Barca in Carthage, to which Hannibal be-
longed. Carthagena, a memorial of Carthage,
which meant '' the city "; and even Cordova is
traced to its primitive form, — Kartah-duba,
— meaning '' an important city." While Isa-
beUa, the name most famous in Spanish annals,
has a still greater antiquity; and was none
other than Jezebel — after the beautiful daugh-
ter of the King of Sidon (the '' Zidoneans "),
who married Ahab, and lured him to his
downfall. And we are told that this wicked
siren whose dreadful fate Elijah foretold,
was cousin to Dido, she who Virgil tells us
'' wept in silence " for the faithless ^neas.
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 13
With what a strange thrill do we find these
threads of association between history sacred
and profane, and both mingled with the mod-
ern history of Spain.
But Phenicia, for the '' iniquity of her
traffick/' was doomed. The roots of this old
Asiatic tree had been slowly and surely per-
ishing, while her branches in the West were
expanding. In the year 332 B. c. the siege and
destruction of Tyre, predicted five hundred
years before by Isaiah, was accomplished by
Alexander the Great, and the' words of the
prophet found their complete fulfillment-r-
that the people of Tarshish should find no
city, no port, no welcome, when they came
back to Syria!
But on the northern coast of the Mediterra-
nean there was another power which was wax-
ing, while the Carthaginian was waning.
The chief occupation of the Roman Republic
was not trade, but conquest. A bitter enmity
existed between the two nations, and Rome
was determined to break this grasping Asiatic
confederacy and to drive it out of Europe.
The Spanish Peninsula they knew little about,
but the rich islands near her own coast — they
must be hers.
14 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
When, after the first Punic war (264-241
B. c), the Carthaginians saw Sardinia and
Sicily torn from them, Hamilcar, their great
general, determined upon a plan of vengeance
which should make of Italy a Punic province.
His people were strong upon the sea, but for
this war of invasion they must have an army,
too. So he conceived the idea of making
Spain the basis of his military operations, and
recruiting an immense army from the Iberian
Peninsula.
CHAPTER III.
The Carthaginian occupation of Spain had
not extended much beyond the coast, and had
been rather in the nature of a commercial alli-
ance with the Spaniards. Now Hamilcar de-
termined by placating, and by bribes, and by
force if necessary, to take possession of the
Peninsula for his own purposes, and to make
of the people a Punic nation under the com-
plete dominion of Carthage. So his first task
was to win, or to subdue, the Keltiberians.
He built the city of New Carthage (now
Carthagena), he showed the people how to de-
velop their immense resources, and by prom-
ises of increased prosperity won the confi-
dence and sympathy of the nation, and soon
had a population of millions from which to
recruit its army.
When his son Hannibal was nine years old,
at his father's bidding he placed his hand upon
the altar and swore eternal enmity to Rome.
The fidelity of the boy to his oath made a
great deal of history. He took up the task
1 6 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
when his father laid it down, inaugurated the
second Punic war (218-201 B. c); and for
forty years carried on one of the most deter-
mined and desperate struggles the world has
ever seen.
Saguntum was an old city in Valencia
which was said to have been founded by the
ancient Greeks before Homer sang of Troy,
or, indeed, before Helen brought ruin upon
that city. At all events its antiquity was
greater even than that of the Phenician cities
in Spain, and after being long forgotten by
the Greeks it had drifted under Roman pro-
tection. It was the only spot in Spain which
acknowledged allegiance to Rome; and for
that reason was marked for destruction as an
act of defiance.
The Saguntines sent an embassy to Rome.
These men made a pitiful and passionate ap-
peal in the Senate Chamber: '' Romans, allies,
friends! help! help! Hannibal is at the gates
of our city. Hannibal, the sworn enemy of
Rome. Hannibal the terrible. Hannibal
who fears not the gods, neither keeps faith
with men. ['' Punic faith" was a byword.]
O Romans, fathers, friends! help while there
is yet time."
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. i?
But they found they had a '' protector ''
who did not protect. The senators sent an
embassy to treat with Hannibal, but no sol-
diers. So, with desperate courage, the Sag-
untines defended their beleaguered city for
weeks, hurling javelins, thrusting their lances,
and beating down the besiegers from the
walls. They had no repeating rifles nor dyna-
mite guns, but they had the terrible falaric,
a shaft of fir with an iron head a yard long, at
the point of which was a mass of burning tow,
which had been dipped in pitch. When a
breach was made in the walls, the inflowing
army would be met by a rain of this deadly
falaric, which was hurled with telling power
and precision. Then, in the short interval of
rest this gave them, men, women, and chil-
dren swiftly repaired the broken walls before
the next assault.
But at last the resourceful Hannibal aban-
doned his battering rams, and with pickaxes
undermined the wall, which fell with a crash.
When asked to surrender, the chief men of the
city kindled a great fire in the market-place,
into which they then threw all the silver and
gold in the treasury, their own gold and silver
and garments and furniture, and then cast
1 8 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
themselves headlong into the flames. This
was their answer.
Saguntum, w^hich for more than a thousand
years had looked from its elevation out upon
the sea, was no more, and its destruction was
one of the thrilling tragedies of ancient his-
tory. On its site there exists to-day a town
called Miir Viedro (old walls), and these old
walls are the last vestige of ancient Sagun-
tum.
In order to understand the indifference of
Rome to the Spanish Peninsula at this time, it
must be remembered that Spain was then the
uttermost verge of the known world, beyond
which was only a dread waste of waters and of
mystery. To the people of Tyre and of
Greece, the '' Pillars of Hercules " had
marked the limit beyond which there was
nothing; and those two columns, Gibraltar
and Ceuta, with the legend ne plus ultra en-
twined about them, still survive, as a symbol,
in the arms of Spain and upon the Spanish
coins; and what is still more interesting to
Americans, in the familiar mark ($) which rep-
resents a dollar. (The English name for the
Spanish peso is pillar-dollar.)
Now Rome was aroused from its apathy.
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 19
It sent an army into Spain, led by Scipio the
Elder, known as Scipio Africanus. When
he fell, his son, only twenty-four years old,
stood up in the Roman Forum and offered to
fill the undesired post; and, in 210 B.C., Scipio
'' the Younger " — and the greater — took the
command — as Livy eloquently says — '' be-
tween the tombs of his father and his uncle,''
who had both perished in Spain within a
month.
The chief feature of Scipio's policy was,
while he was defeating Hannibal in battles, to
be undermining him with his native allies;
and to make that people realize to what hard
taskmasters they had bound themselves; and
by his own manliness and courtesy and jus-
tice to win them to his side.
He marched his army swiftly and unexpect-
edly upon New Carthage, the capital and cen-
ter of the whole Carthaginian movement, sent
his fleet to blockade the city, and planned
his moves with such precision that the
fleet for the blockade and the army for the
siege arrived before the city on the same
day.
Taken entirely by surprise, New Carthage
was captured without a siege. Not one of the
20 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
inhabitants was spared, and spoil of fabulous
amounts fell to the victors.
It seems like a fairy tale — or like the story
of Mexico and Peru 1800 years later — to read
of 276 golden bowls which were brought
to Scipio's tent, countless vessels of silver,
and 18 tons of coined and wrought
silver.
But the richest part of the prize was the 750
Spanish hostages — high in rank of course —
whom the various tribes had given in pledge
of their fidelity to Carthage. Now Scipio held
these pledges, and they were a menace and a
promise. They were Roman slaves, but he
could by kindness, and by holding out the
hope of emancipation, placate and further
bind to him the native people.
By an exercise of tact and clemency Scipio
gained such an ascendancy over the inhabi-
tants, and so moved were they by this unex-
pected generosity and kindness, that many
would gladly have made him their king.
But he seems to have been the '' noblest
Roman of them all," and when saluted as king
on one occasion he said: '' Never call me king.
Other nations may revere that name, but
no Roman can endure it. My soldiers have
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 21
given me a more honorable title — that of
general/'
Such nobility, such a display of Roman
virtue, was a revelation to these barbarians;
and they felt the grandeur of the words,
though they could not quite understand them.
They were won tO' the cause of Rome, and
formed loyal alliances vv^ith Scipio which they
never broke.
In the year 206 b. c. Gades (Cadiz), the last
stronghold, was surrendered to the Romans,
and the entire Spanish Peninsula had been
wrenched from the Carthaginians.
Iberia was changed to Hispania, and fifteen
years later (197 b. c.) the whole of the Penin-
sula was organized intO' a Roman province,
thenceforth known, not as Iberia, nor yet His-
pania; but Spain, and its people as Spaniards.
At the end of the third Punic war (149-146
B. c), the ruin of the Carthaginians was com-
plete. Hannibal had died a fugitive and a
suicide. His nation had not a single ship upon
the seas, nor a foot of territory upon the earth,
and the great city of Carthage was plowed
and sowed with salt. History had made her
last record in the life of an ancient people —
*' Carthago est delenda,''
22 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
It was really only a limited portion of the
Peninsula; a fringe of provinces upon the
south and east coast, which had been under
Carthaginian and now acknowledged Roman
dominion. Beyond these the Keltiberian
tribes in the center formed a sort of confedera-
tion, and consented to certain alliances with
the Romans; while beyond them, intrenched
in their own impregnable monntain fastnesses,
were brave, warlike, independent tribes, which
had never known anything but freedom,
whose names even Rome had not yet heard.
The stern virtue and nobility of Scipio proved
a delusive promise. Rome had not an easy
task, and other and brutal methods were to be
employed in subduing stubborn tribes and
making of the whole a Latin nation. In one
of the defiles of the Pyrenees there may now be
seen the ruins of fortifications built by Cato
the Elder, not long after Scipio, which show-
how early those free people in the north were
made tO' feel the iron heel of the master and to
learn their lesson of submission.
The century which followed Scipio's con-
quest was one of dire experience for Spain.
A Roman army was trampling out every ves-
tige of freedom in provinces which had known
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 23
nothing else; and more than that, Roman
diplomacy was making of their new posses-
sion a fighting ground for the civil war which
was then raging at Rome; and partisans of
Marin s and of Sylla were using and slaugh-
tering the native tribes in their own desperate
struggle. Roman rule was arrogant and
oppressive, Roman governors cruel, arbitrary,
and rapacious, and the boasted '' Roman vir-
tue " seemed to have been left in Rome, when
treaties were made only to be violated at
pleasure.
CHAPTER IV.
As nature delights in adorning the crevices
of crumbling ruins with mosses and graceful
lichens, so literature has busied itself with
these historic ruins; and Cervantes has made
the siege of Numantia (134 b. c.) — more ter-
rible even than that of Saguntum — the sub-
ject of a poem, in which he depicts the horrors
of the famine.
Lira, the heroine, answers her ardent lover
Mirando in high-flown Spanish phrase, which,
when summed up in plain English prose,
means that she cannot listen to his wooing,
because she is so hungry — which, in view of
the fact that she has not tasted food for weeks,
seems to us not surprising!
Sertorius, whose story is told by Plutarch,
afifords another picturesque subject for Cor-
neille in one of his most famous tragedies.
This Roman was an adherent of Marius in the
long struggle with Sylla, and while upholding
his cause in Spain he won to his side the peo-
24
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN: 25
pie of Lusitania (Portugal), who made him
their ruler, and helped him to fight the great
army of the opposing Roman faction, part of
which was led by Pompey.
Mithridates, in Asia Minor, was also in con-
flict with Sylla, and sent an embassy to Ser-
torius which led to a league between the two
for mutual aid, and for the defense of the cause
of Marius. But senators of his own party be-
came jealous of the great elevation of Ser-
torius, and conspired to assassinate him at a
feast to which he was invited. So ended (72
B. c.) one of the most picturesque characters
and interesting episodes in the difficult march
of barbarous Spain toward enlightenment and
civilization.
Sertorius seems to have been a great ad-
ministrator as well as fighter, and must also be
counted one of the civilizers of Spain. He
founded a school at Osca, — now Huesca, —
where he had Roman and Greek masters for
the Spanish youth. And it is interesting to
learn that there is to-day at that city a uni-
versity which bears the title '' University of
Sertorius."
But it is not the valor nor the sagacity of
Sertorius which made him the favorite of
26 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
poets; but the story of the White Hind, which
he made to serve him so ingeniously in estab-
lishing his authority with the Lusitanians.
A milk-white fawn, on account of its rarity,
was given him by a peasant. He tamed her,
and she became his constant companion, un-
affrighted even in the tumult of battle. He
saw that the people began to invest the little
animal with supernatural qualities; so, finally,
he confided to them that she was sent to him
by the Goddess Diana, who spoke to him
through her, and revealed important secrets.
Such ^is the story which Corneille and
writers in other lands have found so fascinat-
ing, and which an English author has made
the subject of his poem '' The White Hind of
Sertorius."
Another Roman civil war, more pregnant
of great results, was to be fought out in Spain.
Julius Csesar's conspiracy against the Roman
Republic, and his desperate fight with Pom-
pey for the dictatorship, long drenched Span-
ish soil with blood, and had its final culmina-
tion (after Pompey's tragic death in Egypt)
in Caesar's victory over Pompey's sons at
Munda, in Spain, 45 B. c.
With this event, the military triumphs and
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 2^
the intrigues of Caesar had accompUshed his
purpose. He was declared Imperator, per-
petual Dictator of Rome, and religious sacri-
fices were decreed to him as if he were a god.
Unconscious of the chasm which was yawning
at his feet he haughtily accepted the honors
and adulation of men who were at that very
moment conspiring for his death. On the
fatal '' Ides of March " (44 B. c.) he was
stricken in the Senate Chamber by the hands
of his friends, and the great C^esar lay dead at
the feet of Pompey's statue.
The world had reached a supreme crisis in
its existence. Two events^ — the most mo-
mentous it has ever known — were at hand:
the birth of a Roman Empire, which was to
perish in a few centuries, after a life of amaz-
ing splendor; and the birth of a spiritual king-
dom, which would never die!
Caesar's nephew, Octavius Augustus, by
gradual approaches reached the goal toward
which no doubt his greater uncle was moving.
After defeating Brutus and Cassius at Philippl
(42 B. c.) and then after destroying his only
competitor, Antony, at Actium (3 1 B. c.) he
assumed the imperial purple under the name
of Augustus. The title sounded harmless,
28 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
but its wearer had founded the '' Roman Em-
pire."
At last there was peace. Spain was pacified,
and only here and there did she struggle in the
grasp of the Romans. Augustus, to make
sure of the permanence of this pacification,
himself went to the Peninsula. He built
cities in the plains, where he compelled the
stubborn mountaineers to reside, and estab-
lished military colonies in the places they had
occupied.
Saragossa was one of these cities in the
plains, and its name was '' Caesar Augusta,"
and many others have wandered quite as far
from their original names, which may, how-
ever, still be traced.
It is said that '' the annals of the happy are
brief." Let us hope that poor Spain, so long
harried by fate, was happy in the next four
hundred years, for her story can be briefly
told. She seemed to have settled into a state
of eternal peace. It was a period not of
external events, but of a process — an internal
process of assimilation. Spain, in every de-
partment of its life, was becoming Latinized.
A people of rare intellectual activity had
be^n united to the life of Rome at the mo-
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 29
merit of her greatest intellectual elevation.
Was it strange that no Roman province ever
produced so long a list of historians, poets,
philosophers, as did Southern Spain after the
Augustan conquest? When we read the Hst
of great Roman authors who were born in
Spain — the three Senecas, one of whom, the
author and wit, opened his veins at the com-
mand of Nero (65 A. D.), and another, the
Gallio of the book of Acts; also Lucan, Mar-
tial, and Quintilian, when we read these
names native to Spain, it seems as if the
source of inspiration had removed from the
banks of the Tiber to the banks of the
Guadalquivir.
Nowhere can the student of Roman an-
tiquities find a richer field than in Spain. And
not only that, there is to-day in the manners
and customs, and in the habits of the peasan-
try, a pervading atmosphere of the classic land
which adopted them, which all that has oc-
curred since has been powerless to efface,
while the language of Spain is Latin to its
core. Nor is this strange when we reflect
that they were under this powerful influence
for a period as long as from Christopher
Columbus to the Spanish-American War!
CHAPTER V.
In the history of nations there is one fact
which again and again with startUng uniform-
ity repeats itself. The rough, strong races
from the north menace, and at last rudely
dominate more highly civilized but less hardy
races at the South, to the ultimate benefit of
both, although with much present discom-
fort to the conquered race !
In Greece it was first the rude Hellenes who
overran the Pelasgians. And again, long
after that, there was another descent of fierce
northern barbarians, — the Dorians from
Epirus, — who, when they took possession
of the Peloponnesus and became the Spar-
tans, infused that vigorous strain without
which the history of Greece might have been
a very tame affair. In the British Isles it was
the Picts and Scots, who would have done
the same thing with England, perhaps, if the
Angles and Saxons had not come to the res-
cue, while Spain had her own Picts and Scots
in the mountain tribes of the Pyrenees, But
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 31
in the fifth century there was the most stu-
pendous ilkistration of this tendency, when all
of Southern Europe was at last inundated by
that northern deluge, and the efifete Roman
Empire was efifaced.
The process had been a gradual one; had
commenced, in fact, two centuries before the
overthrow of the Roman Republic. But not
until the fourth century, after the wicked old
empire had espoused Christianity, did it be-
come obvious that its foundations were under-
mined by this flood of barbarians. In 410
A. D., when the West-Goths, under Alaric,
entered and sacked Rome, her power was
broken. The roots no longer nourished the
distant extremities in Britain and Gaul, and it
was only a question of time when these, too,
should succumb to the inflowing tide.
The Ostro-Goths — or East-Goths — in
Northern Italy, and the Visigoths — or West-
Goths — in Gaul, were setting up kingdoms of
their own, under a Roman protectorate. The
long period of peace in Spain was broken.
The Pyrenees, with their warlike tribes, de-
fended her for a time; but the Sueves and the
Vandals — the latter a companion tribe of the
Goths — had found an easier entrance by the
32 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
sea on the east. They flowed down toward the
south, and from thence across to the north-
ern coast of Africa, which they colonized,
leaving a memorial in Spain, in the lovely
province of Andalusia, which was named after
them — Vandalusia, But before the sacking
of Rome a wave of the Gothic invasion had
overflowed the Pyrenees, and Northern Spain
had become a part of the Gothic kingdom in
Gaul, vv^ith the city of Toulouse as its head.
A century of contact with Roman civiliza-
tion had wrought great changes in this
conquering race. They were untamed in
strength, but realized the value of the civilities
of life, and of intellectual superiority; and
even strove to acquire some of the arts and
accomplishments of the race they were in-
vading. They were not yet acknowledged
entire masters of Gaul and northern Spain.
On condition of military service they had un-
disputed possession of their territory, with
their own king, laws, and customs, but were
nominally subjects of the Roman Emperor,
Honorius.
Their attitude toward the Romans at this
period cannot better be told than in the words
of Ataulf himself (or Ataulfus, or Adolphus),
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 33
whose interesting story will be briefly related.
He says:
'' It was my first wish to destroy the Roman
name and erect in its place a Gothic Empire,
taking to myself the place and the powers of
Caesar Augustus. But when experience
taught me that the untamable barbarism of
the Goths would not sufifer them to live under
the sway of law, and that the abolition of the
institutions on which the state rested would
involve the ruin of the state itself, I chose in-
stead the glory of renewing and maintaining
by Gothic strength the fame of Rome; pre-
ferring to go down to posterity as the restorer
of that Roman power which it was beyond my
power to replace."
These are not the words of a barbarian;
although by the corrupt and courtly nobles in
Rome he was considered one; but no doubt
he towered far above the barbarous host
whom he helped to lead into Rome in the
year 410 A. D.
Ataulf was the brother-in-law of Alaric, and
succeeded that great leader in authority after
his death (410 A. D.).
At the time of the sacking of Rome this
Gothic prince fell in love with Placidia, the
34 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
sister of the Emperor Honorius; and after the
fashion of his people, carried her away as his
captive; not an unwilHng one, we suspect, for
we learn of her great devotion to her brave,
strong wooer, with blond hair and blue eyes.
Ataulf took his fair prize to the city of Nar-
bonne in southern France, and made her his
Queen. But when Constantius, a disap-
pointed Roman lover of Placidia's, instigated
Honorius to send an army against him and
his Goths, he withdrew into Spain, and estab-
lished his court with its rude splendor in the
ancient city of Barcelona.
He seems to have had not an easy task be-
tween the desire to please his haughty Roman
bride and, at the same time, to repel the
charge of his people that he was becoming
effeminate and Romanized; and, finally, so
jealous did they become of her influence that
Ataulf was assassinated in the presence of his
wife, all his children butchered, and the
proud Placidia compelled to walk barefoot
through the streets of Barcelona.
Constantius, the faithful Roman lover,
came with an army and carried back to Rome
the royal widow, who married him and became
the mother of Valentinian HI., who succeeded
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 35
his uncle Honorius as Emperor of Rome in
425 A. D., under the regency of Placidia dur-
ing his infancy.
This romance, lying at the very root of a
Gothic dynasty in Spain, marks the earliest
beginnings of a line of Visigoth kings.
Atatilf s successor removed his court tO' Tou-
louse in France, and Spain for many years
remained only an outlying province of the
Gothic kingdom; her turbulent northern
tribes refusing to accept or to mingle with
the strange intruders. When driven by the
Romans ftom their mountain fastnesses
the Basques, many of them, were at that
time dispersed through southern and cen-
tral France; which accounts for the pres-
ence of that race in France, before alluded to.
In the second half of the fifth century At-
tila, '' the Scourge of God," swept down upon
Europe with his Huns, — mysterious, terrible,
as a fire out of heaven, and more like an army
of demons than men, — destroying city after
city, and driving the people before them, until
they came to Orleans. There they met the
combined Roman and Gothic armies. The-
odoric, the Visigoth king, was killed on the
battlefield. But to him, and to the Roman
3^ A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
general ^tius, belongs the glory of the defeat
of the Huns (451 A. D.).
It was Evaric, the son of this Theodoric,
who finally completed the conquest of the
Spanish Peninsula, and with him really com-
mences the line of Visigoth kings in Spain,
and the conversion of that country into a
Gothic empire,* entirely independent of
Rome.
The German Franks, under Clovis, estab-
lished their kingdom in Gaul 481 A. D.
The Angles and Saxons in 446 a. d. did
the same in Britain. The Ostrogoths had
their own kingdom in northern Italy and
southern Gaul (Burgundy). So, with the
Visigoths ruling in Spain, the '' northern del-
uge " had in the fifth century practically sub-
merged the whole of Europe, and above its
dark waters showed only the somber wreck of
a Roman empire.
From this fusing of Roman and Teutonic
races there were to arise two types of civiliza-
tion, utterly different in kind, the Anglo-
Saxon and the Latin. In one the prevailing
element, after the fusing was complete, was
* The famous Gothic code established by him still linger
in much of Spanish jurisprudence.
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 31
to be the Teutonic; in the other, the Roman.
Herein Hes the difference between these two
great divisions of the human family, and this
is the germinal fact in the war raging to-day
between Spain and the United States. It is
a difference created not by the mastery of
arms, but by the more efficient mastery of
ideas.
When the Angles and Saxons conquered
Britain, after a Roman occupation of over
three hundred years, they swept it clean of
Roman laws, literature, and civilization.
Untamed pagan barbarians though they
were, they had fine instincts and simple ideals
of society and government, and they cast out
the corrupt old empire, root and branch.
The Visigoths in Spain, more enlightened
than they, already Christianized, and, perhaps,
even superior in intelligence, were content in
the words of Ataulf — '' to renew and maintain
by Gothic strength the fame of Rome." So
they built upon the ruins of decaying institu-
tions of a corrupt civilization, a kingdom
which flourished with the enormous vitality
drawn from the conquering race, which race
was in turn conquered by Roman ideals.
So, in the conflict now existing between
33 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
Spain and the United States, we see the Span-
iard, the child of the Romans; valorous, pic-
turesque, cruel, versed in strategic arts, and
with a savor of archaic wickedness which be-
longs to a corrupt old age. In the American
we see the child of the simple Angles and Sax-
ons, no less brave, but just, and with an
enthusiasm and confiding integrity which
seems to endow him with an imperishable
youth.
CHAPTER VI.
The story of Ulfilas, who Christianized the
pagan Goths in the last half of the fourth cen-
tury, is really the first chapter not alone in the
history of Gothic civilization but in that of
the German and English literatures; which,
with their vast riches, had their origin in the
strange achievement of Ulfilas. He had,
while a boy, been captured by some Goths off
the coast of Asia Minor, and was called by
them " WuM-ilas " (little wolf). In his de-
sire tO' translate the Bible to his captors
*' Wulf-ilas reduced the Gothic language to
writing. He had first to create an alpha-
bet; taking twenty-two' Roman letters, and
inventing two more: the letter w, and still
another for th. So while, after Constantine,
the Christian religion was being adopted by
the Roman Empire, and while its simple dog-
mas were being discussed and refined into a
complicated and intricate system by men
versed in Greek philosophy, and then formu-
39
40 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN'.
lated by minds trained in logic and rhetoric,
the same religion was being spelled out in
simple fashion by the Goths in central Europe
from the book translated for them by Ulfilas.
All they found was that Jesus Christ was
the beloved son of God and the Saviour of the
world; that he was the long-promised
Messiah, and to believe in him and to follow
his teachings was salvation. They knew
nothing of the Trinity nor of any theologic
subtleties, and this was the simple faith which
the Goths carried with them into the lands
they conquered.
The Romans, who had spent three centuries
in burning Christians and trying to obliterate
the religion of Christ, were now its jealous
guardians. They considered this '' Arian-
ism," as it was called, a blasphemous heresy,
so shocking that they refused to call it Chris-
tianity at all. The history of the first century
of the Gothic kingdom in Spain was therefore
mainly that of the deadly strife between Arian-
ism and Catholicism, or orthodoxy. The
Goths could not discuss, for they were utterly
unable to understand even the terms under
discussion ; but they could fight and lay down
their lives for the faith which had done so
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 41
much for them; and this they did freely and
fiercely.
So the simple Gothic people were bewil-
dered by finding themselves in the presence of
a Christianity incomprehensible to them; a
complicated, highly organized social order,
equally incomprehensible; and a science and a
literature of which they knew nothing. They
might struggle for a while against this tide of
superiority, but one by one they entered the
fascinating portals of learning and of art, ac-
cepted the dogmas of learned prelates, and a
few generations were sufficient to make them
meek disciples of the older civilization.
The Spanish language fairly illustrates the
result from this incongruous mingling of
Roman and Gothic. It is said to be a lan-
guage of Latin roots with a Teutonic gram-
mar.
The Goths laid rough hands on the speech
they consented to use, and the smooth,
sonorous Latin was strangely broken and
mixed with Gothic words and idioms; yet it
became one of the most copious, flexible, and
picturesque of languages, with a literature sec-
ond tO' none.
In precisely the same way was the classic
42 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
old ruin of a Roman state re-enforced with a
rough Gothic framework, and after centuries
have hidden the joints and the scars with
mosses and verdure, we have a picturesque
and beautiful Spain!
But barbarous kings were fighting other
things besides heresy. There were rebellions
to put down; there were remnants of Sueves
and of Roman power to drive out, and there
were always the fierce mountain tribes who
never mingled with any conquerors, nor had
ever surrendered to anything but the Catholic
faith.
There were intermarriages between the
three Gothic kingdoms, in Burgundy, Gaul,
and Spain, and the history of some of these
royal families shows what wild passions still
raged among the Goths, and what atrocities
were strangely mingled with ambitious proj-
ects and religion.
Athanagild, one of the Visigoth kings, gave
his daughter Brunhilde in marriage to the
King of the Franks in Gaul. The story of
this terrible Queen, stained with every crime,
and accused of the death of no less than ten
kings, comes tO' a fitting end when, we are
told, that in her wicked old age she was tied
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 43
to the tail of an unbroken horse and dragged
over the stones of Paris (600 A. D.).
At this time Leovigild (570-587), the Visi-
goth King, was ruHng Spain . with a strong
hand. He had assumed more splendor than
any of his predecessors. He had erected a
magnificent throne in his palace at Toledo,
and his head, wearing the royal diadem, was
placed on Spanish coins, which may still be
seen. A daughter of the terrible Brunhilde,
the Princess Ingunda, came over from France
to become the wife of Ermingild, the son of
the great King Leovigild, and heir to his
throne.
All went smoothly until it was discovered
that this fair Princess was a Catholic, and was
artfully plotting to win her husband over to
her faith from the faith of his fathers —
Arianism.
Although Catholicism had made great in-
roads among their people, never before had it
invaded the royal household. And when his
son declared his intention to desert their an-
cient creed there commenced a terrible conflict
between father and son, which finally led to
Ermingild's open rebellion, and at last to his
being beheaded by his father's order. But this
44 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
crime against nature was in vain. Arianism
had reached the Hmit of its Hfe in Spain.
Upon the death of Leovigild, his second son,
Recared (587-601), succeeded to the throne,
and one of his first acts was to abjure the old
faith of the Gothic people, and Catholicism be-
camxe the established religion of Spain.
CHAPTER VIL
Toledo, the capital of the Visigoth Kings, is
the city about which ckister the richest memo-
ries of Spain in her heroic age. When Leo-
vigild removed his capital there from Seville
in the sixth century, it was already an ancient
Jewish city, about which tradition had long
busied itself. To-day, as it sits on the sum-
mit of a barren hill, one looks in vain for traces
of its ancient Gothic splendor. But the spot
where now stands a beautiful cathedral is hal-
lowed by a wonderful legend, which Murillo
made the subject of one of his great paintings.
It is said that the Apostle St. James founded
on that very spot the Church of Santa Maria;
and that the Virgin, in recognition of the
dedication to her, descended from heaven to
present its Bishop, Ildofonso, with a mar-
velous chasuble. In proof of this miracle,
doubting visitors are still shown the marks of
Mary's footprint upon a stair in the chapel!
However this may be, it is on this very spot
46 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
that King Recared formally abjured Arianism;
and preserved in a cloister of the cathedral
may still be seen the '' Consecration Stone,"
which reads: that the Church of Santa Maria,
— built probably on the foundation of the
older church, — was consecrated under '' King
Recared the Catholic, 587 A. d/' It also tells
of the councils of the Spanish Church held
there— at one of which councils was the
famous canon which decreed that all future
Kings must swear they would show no mercy
to '' that accursed people " — meaning the
Jews. It was these very Jews who had
brought commercial success and created the
enormous wealth of the city, from which it
was now the duty of the pious Visigoth Kings
to harry and hunt them as if they were fright-
ened deer.
The Visigoth monarchy, although in many
cases hereditary, was in fact elective. And
the student of Spanish history will not find an
orderly royal succession as in England and
France. Disputes regarding the succession
were not infrequent, and sometimes there will
occur an interval with apparently no king at
all, followed by another period when there are
two — one ruling in the north and another in
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 47
the south. *' The King is dead — long live the
King! " might do for France, but not for
Spain.
During one of these periods of uncertainty,
in the latter half of the seventh century, it is
said that Leo, a holy man (afterward Pope),
was told in a dream that the man who must
Wear the crown was then a laborer, living in
the west, and that his name was Wamba.
They traveled in search of this man almost
to the borders of Portugal, and there they
found the future candidate for the throne
plowing in the field. The messengers, bow-
ing before the plowman, informed him that
he had been selected as King of Spain.
Wamba laughed, and said, '' Yes, I shall be
King of Spain when my pole puts forth
leaves."
Instantly the bare pole began to bud, and
in a few moments was covered with verdure!
In vain did Wamba protest. What could a
poor man do in the face of such a miracle,
and with a Spanish Duke pressing a poniard
against his breast, and telling him to choose
on the instant between a throne and a tomb!
The unhappy Wamba suffered himself to
be borne in triumph to Toledo, and there to
48 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
be crowned. And a very wise and excellent
King did he make. He seemed fully equal
to the difficult demands of his new position.
A rebellion, fomented by an ambitious Duke
Paul, who gathered about his standard all the
banished Jews, was a very formidable affair.
But Wamba put it down with a firm hand, and
then, when it was over, treated the conspira-
tors and rebels with marvelous clemency.
When his reign was concluded he left a record
of wisdom and sagacity rare in those days, in
any land.
His taking ofif the stage was as remarkable
as his coming on. He fell into a trance
(October 14, 680), and after long insensibility
it was concluded that the King was dying.
According to a custom of the period Wamba's
head was shaved, and he was clothed in the
habit of a monk. The meaning of this was
that if he died, he would, as was fitting, pass
into the Divine presence in penitential garb.
But if, peradventure, the patient survived, he
was pledged to spend the rest of his life in
that holy vocation, renouncing every worldly
advantage.
So when, after a few hours, Wamba, in per-
fect health, opened his eyes, he found that in-
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 49
stead of a King he was transformed into a
Monk!
Whether this was a cunning device of this
philosophic King to lay down the burdens
which w^earied him, and spend the rest of his
days in tranquilHty; or whether it was the work
of the Royal Prince, who joyfully assumed the
diadem which he had so unwillingly worn,
nobody knows. But AVamba passed the re-
mainder of his days in a monastery near
Burgos, and the ambitious Ervigius reigned
as his successor,
CHAPTER VIII.
• The Visigoth kingdom, which had stood
for three centuries, had passed its meridian.
It had created a magnificent background for
historic Spain, and a heritage which would be
the pride and glory of the proudest nation in
Europe. The Goths had come as only rude
intruders into that country; but to be
descended from the Visigoth Kings was here-
after to be the proudest boast of the Spaniard.
And the man who could make good such
claim to distinction was a Hidalgo; or in its
original form, hijo-de-algo — son of somebody.
But many generations of peace had im-
paired the rugged strength and softened the
sinews of the nation. It was the beginning of
the end when, at the close of the seventh cen-
tury, there were two rival claimants to the
throne; and while the vicious and cruel
Witiza reigned at Toledo, Roderick, the son
of Theodofred, also reigned in Andalusia.
There had been a long struggle, during which
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. Si
it is said that Theodofred's eyes had been put
out by his victorious rival, and his son Rod-
erick had obtained assistance from the Greek
Emperor at Byzantium in asserting his own
claims. He succeeded in driving Witiza out
of the country; and in 709, — '' the last of the
Goths/' — was crowned at Toledo, King of
all Spain.
But the struggle was not over; and it was
about to lead to a result which is one of the
most momentous in the history, not alone of
Spain, — nor yet of Europe, — but of Christen-
dom. Witiza was dead, but his two sons, with
a formidable following, were still trying to
work the ruin of Roderick. A certain Count
Julian, who, on account of his daughter Flo-
rinda, had his own wrongs to avenge, accepted
the leadership of these rebels. The power of
the Visigoths had extended across the nar-
row strait (cut by the Phenicians) over to the
opposite shore, where Morocco seems to be
reaching out in vain endeavor to touch the
land from which she was long ago severed;
and there, at Tangiers, this arch-traitor laid
his plans and matured the scheme of revenge
and treachery which had such tremendous re-
sults for Europe. With an appearance of per-
52 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
feet loyalty he parted from Roderick, who
unsuspectingly asked him to bring him some
hawks from Africa when he returned. Bow-
ing, he said: ''Sire, I will bring you such
hawks as never were seen in Spain before."
For one hundred years an unprecedented
wave of conquest had been moving from Asia
toward the west. Mahommedanism, which
was destined to become the scourge of Chris-
tendom, had subjected Syria, Mesopotamia,
Egypt, and northern Africa, until it reached
Ceuta — the companion Pillar to Gibraltar on
the African coast.
At this point the Goths had stood, as a pro-
tecting wall beyond which the Asiatic deluge
could not flow.
Count Julian was the trusted military
commander of the Gothic garrisons in Mo-
rocco, as Musa, the oft-defeated Saracen
leader, knew to his cost. As this Musa
was one day looking with covetous eyes
across at the Spanish Peninsula, he was
suddenly surprised by a visit from Count
Julian; and still more astonished when that
commander ofi^ered to surrender to him the
Gothic strongholds Tangier, Arsilla, and
Ceuta in return for the assistance of the Sara-
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 53
cen army in the cause of Witiza's sons against
Roderick.
Amazed at such colossal treason, Musa re-
ferred Count Julian to his master the Khalif,
at Damascus, who at once accepted his infa-
mous proposition. In Spanish legend and
history this man is always designated as The.
Traitor, as if standing alone and o.i a pin-
nacle among the men who have betrayed their
countries.
Musa, half doubting, sent a preliminary
force of about five hundred Moors under a
chief named Tarif, to the opposite coast; and
the Moors found, as was promised, that they
might range at their own will and pleasure in
that earthly paradise of Andalusia. The
name of this Mussulman chief, Tarif, was
given to the spot first touched by the feet of
the Mahommedan, which was called Tarif a;
and as Tarifa was afterward the place where
customs were collected, the word tariff is an
imperishable memorial of that event. In like
manner Gibraltar was named Gebel-al-Tarik,
(Mountain of Tarik) after the leader bearing
that name, who was sent later by Musa with a
larger force; which name has been gradually
changed to its present form — Gibraltar.
54 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
Poor King Roderick, while still fighting to
maintain his own right to the crown he wore,
learned with dismay that his country was in-
vaded by a horde of people from the African
coast. Theodemir wrote to him: ''So
strange is their appearance that we might take
them for inhabitants of the sky. Send me all
the troops you can collect, without delay."
The hawks promised by Count Julian had
arrived !
The hour of doom had sounded for the last
King of the Visigoths, and for his kingdom.
There is a legend that a mysterious tower ex-
isted near Toledo, which was built by Hercu-
les, soon after Adam, with the command that
no king or lord of Spain should ever seek to
know what it contained; instead of that it was
the duty of each King to put a new lock upon
its mysterious portal.
It is said that Roderick, perhaps in his ex-
tremity, resolved to disobey the command,
and to discover the secret hidden in the En-
chanted Tower. In a jeweled shrine in the
very heart of the structure he came at last to
a coffer of silver, '' right subtly wrought,'' and
far inside of that he reached the final mystery,
— only this, — a white cloth folded between
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 55
two pieces of copper. With trembling eager-
ness Roderick opened and found painted
thereon men with turbans, carrying banners,
with swords strung around their necks, and
bows behind them, slung at the saddle-bow.
Over these figures was written: ''When this
cloth shall be opened, men appareled like
these shall conquer Spain, and be the lords
thereof.''
Such is the picturesque legend. Men with
'' turbans and banners and swords slung about
their necks," were assuredly now in Andalusia,
led by Tarik, who had literally burned his
ships behind him, and then told his followers
to choose between victory or death.
The twO' armies faced each other at a spot
near Cadiz. It is said that Roderick, the de-
generate successor of Alaric, weni into battfe
in a robe of white silk embroidered with gold,
sitting on a car of ivory, drawn by white
mules. Tarik's men, who were fighting for
victory or Paradise, overwhelmed the Goths;
Roderick, in his flight, was drowned in the
Guadalquivir, and his diadem of pearls and his
embroidered robe were sent to Damascus as
trophies.
Count Julian urged that the victory be im-
56 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
mediately followed up by Musa before there
was time for the Spaniards to rally. One
after another the cities of Toledo, Cordova,
and Granada capitulated, the persecuted Jews
flocking to the new standard and aiding in the
conquest of their oppressors.
As well might one have held back the At-
lantic from rushing through that canal upon
the isthmus, as to have stayed the inflowing of
the Saracens through the breach made by
''the Traitor," Count Julian! In less than
two years Spain was a conquered province,
rendering allegiance to the Khalif at Damas-
cus, and the Moor, — as the followers of the
Prophet in Morocco were called, — reigned in
Toledo.
It was in the year 412 that Ataulfus, with
His haughty. bride Placidia, had established his
Court at Barcelona, and Romanized Spain
became Gothic Spain. In 711 — just three
centuries later — the Visigoth kingdom had
disappeared as utterly beneath the Saracen
flood as had its ill-fated King Roderick under
the waters of the Guadalquivir; and fastened
upon Christian Europe was a Mahommedan
empire; an empire v/hich all the combined
powers of that continent have never since been
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 57
able entirely to dislodge. From that ill-
omened day in 709, when Tarif set foot on the
Spanish coast, to this June of 1898, the
Mahommedan has been in Europe; and re-
mains to-day, a scourge and a blight in the
territory upon which his cruel grasp still
lingers.
CHAPTER IX.
Tartk and his twelve thousand Berbers,*
or Moors, had at one stroke won the Spanish
Peninsula. The banner of the Prophet waved
over every one of the ancient and famous
cities in Andalusia, and the turbaned army
had marched through the stubborn north as
far as the Spanish border. As Musa, intoxi-
cated with success, stood at last upon the
Pyrenees, he saw before him a vision of a sub-
jugated Europe. The banner of the Prophet
should wave from the Pyrenees to the Baltic !
A mosque should stand where St. Peter's now
stands in Rome! So, step by step, the
Moslems pressed up into Gaul, and in 732
their army had reached Tours.
It was a moment of supreme peril for Chris-
tendom. But, happily, the Franks had what
the Goths had not — r great leader. Charles
Martel, — then Maire du Palais, and virtually
King of France, instead of the feeble Lothair^
* The old Phenician name for the North African tribes, and
plural of Iberia.
s8
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIiV. 59
— led his Franks into what was to be one of
the most decisive of the world's battles; a bat-
tle which would determine whether Europe
should be Christian or Mahommedan.
The tide of infidel invasion had reached its
limits. The strong right arm of Charles dealt
such ponderous blows that the Moslems broke
in confusion, and this savior of Christendom
was thenceforth known as Charles Martel:
''Karl of the Hammer."
After this crushing disaster at Tours the
Moors realized that they were not invincible.
Their vaulting ambition did not again try to
overleap the Pyrenees; and they addressed
themselves to setthng affairs in their new
territory.
It has been wisely said that if the Mahom-
medan state had been confined within the
borders of Arabia, it would speedily have col-
lapsed. Islam became a world-wide religion
when it clothed itself with armor, and became
a church militant. It was conquest which
saved the faith of the Prophet. In its home
in Asia the Empire of Mahommed was com-
posed of hostile tribes and clans, and as it
moved westward it gathered up Syrians,
Egyptians, and the Berbers on the African
6o A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
coast, who, when Morocco was reached, were
known as Moors. This strange, heteroge-
neous mass of humanity, all nourished from
Arabia, was held together by two things: the
Koran and the szvord.
When conquest was exchanged for peace-
ful possession, all the internecine jealousies,
the tribal feuds, and old hatreds burst forth,
and the first fifty years of Moorish rule in
Spain was a period of internal strife and dis-
order— Arabs and Moors were jealously try-
ing to undermine each other; while the Arabs
themselves were torn by factions representing
rival clans in Damascus.
But a singular clemency was shown toward
the conquered Spaniards. They were per-
mitted to retain their own law and judges, and
their own governors administered the affairs
of the districts and collected the taxes. The
rule of the conquering race bore upon the peo-
ple actually less heavily than had the old
Gothic rule. Jews and Christians alike were
free tO' worship whom or what they pleased;
but, at the same time, great benefits were be-
stowed upon those who would accept the
religion of the Prophet. The slave class,
which was very large and had suflfered terrible
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 6i
cruelties under its old masters, was treated
with especial mildness and humanity. There
was a simple road to freedom opened to every
man. He had only to say, '' There is one
God, and Mahommed is his Prophet/' and on
the instant he became a freeman !
Such gentle proselytizing as this speedily
won converts, not alone among slaves but
from all classes. The pacification of Spain by
the Romans had required centuries; while
only a few years sufficed to make of the van-
quished in the southern provinces, a contented
and almost happy people; not only reconciled,
but even glad of the change of masters.
Never was Andalusia sO' mildly, justly, and
wisely governed as by her Arab conquerors.
The most delicate of all problems is that of
dealing with a conquered race in its own land.
That this should have been so wisely and so
skillfully handled would be incomprehensible
if this had been really, what it is always
called, a Moorish conquest. But to be accu-
rate, it was a Moorish invasion and a Saracen
conquest !
The fierce Berber Moor contributed the
brute force, which was wielded by Saracen
intelligence.
62 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
The Saracens were the leaven which pene-
trated the whole sodden mass of Mahommed-
anism. With a civilization which had been
ripening for centuries under Oriental skies, —
rich in wisdom, learning, culture, science, and
in art, — they had come into Europe, infidels
though they were, to build up and not to
destroy.
The Roman conquest of Spain had civil-
ized a barbarous race. The Gothic con-
quest of Romanized Spain had converted
an effete civilization into a strong semi-
barbarism. Now again the Saracen had
come from the East to convert a semi-
barbarism into a civilization richer than
any Spain had yet known, and, more
than that, to hold up a torch of learning
and enlightenment which should illumine
Europe in the days of darkness which were
at hand. Although this difference between
Arab and Moor primarily existed, they be-
came fused, and we shall speak of them only
as Moors. But we should not lose sight of
the fact that the superior intelligence which
made the Moorish kingdom magnificent was
from the land of the Prophet.
The Saracen dealt gently with the con-
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 63
quered Spaniard, not because his heart was
tender and kind, but because he was crafty and
wise, and knew when not to use force, in order
to accomplish his ends. For the same reason
he refrained from trying to break the spirit of
the independent northern provinces, where
the descendants of the old Visigoths — the
Hidalgos (''sons-of-somebody'') — proudly in-
trenched themselves in an attitude of defiance,
making in time a clearly defined Christian
north and Moslem south, with a mountain
range (the Sierra Guadarrama) and a river
(the Ebro) as the natural boundary line of the
two territories. The Moor was a child of the
sun. If the stubborn Goth chose to sulk, up
among the chilly heights and on the bleak
plains of the north, he might do so, and it was
little matter if one Alfonso called himself
*' King of the Asturians," in that mountain-
defended and sea-girt province. The fertile
plains of Andalusia, and the banks of the
Tagus and Guadalquivir, w^ere all of Spain the
Moor wanted for the wonderful kingdom
which was to be the marvel of the Middle
Ages.
CHAPTER X.
But, at the early period we are considering,
the '' Christian kingdom '' was composed of a
handful of men and women who had fled from
the Moslems to the mountains of the
Asturias. Its one stronghold was the cave of
Covadonga, where Pelagius, or Pelayo, had
gathered thirty men and ten women. Here,
in the dark recesses of this cave, — which was
approached through a long and narrow moun-
tain pass, and entered by a ladder of ninety
steps, — was the germ of the future kingdoms
of Castile and Aragon, and also of the down-
fall of the Moor. An Arab historian said
later: ''Would to God the Moslems had ex-
tinguished that spark which was destined to
consume the dominion of Islam in the north "
and, he might have added, '' in Spain''
When Alfonso of Cantabria married the
daughter of Pelayo in 751, the cave of Cova-
donga no longer held the insurgent band. He
roused all the northern provinces against the
Moors and gathered an army which drove
64
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 65
them step by step further south, until he had
pushed the Christian frontier as far as the
great Sierra, so that the one-time Visigoth
capital of Toledo marked the line of the Mos-
lem border fortresses. Too scanty in num-
bers and too poor in purse to occupy the
territory, Alfonso and his army then retreated
to their mountains, there to enjoy the empty
satisfaction of their conquest.
But the Moors in Andalusia had too many
troubles of their own at that time to give
much heed to Alfonso I. and his rebellious
band hiding in the mountains. The Berbers
and the Arabs on the African coast were jeal-
ous and antagonistic; the one was devout,
credulous, and emotional; the other cool,
crafty, and diplomatic. Suddenly the long-
slumbering hatred burst into open revolt, and
the Khalif sent thirty thousand Syrians to put
down a formidable revolution in his African
dominions.
In full sympathy with their kinsmen across
the sea, the Moors in Spain began to reahze
that while that land had been won by twelve
thousand Berbers, led by one Berber general
that the lion's share of the spoils had gone to
the Arabs, who were carrying things with a
66 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
high hand ! There were signs of a general up-
rising, in concert with the revolution in
Africa; and it looked as if the new territory
was to be given up to anarchy; when suddenly
all was changed.
The Khalif, who was the head of all the
Mahommedan empire, was supposed to be the
supreme ruler in spiritual and temporal
afifairs. But as his empire extended to such
vast dimensions, he was obliged to delegate
much of his temporal authority to others; so
gradually it had become somewhat like that of
the Pope. He was the supreme spiritual
head, and only nominally supreme in affairs of
state.
The family of Omeyyad had given fourteen
Khalifs to the Mahommedan empire from 66 1
to 750; at which time the then reigning
Omeyyad was deposed, and the, second
dynasty of Khalifs commenced, called Abba-
side, after Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet.
Abd-er-Rahman was a Prince belonging to
the deposed family of the Omeyyads. He
was the only one of his family who escaped the
exterminating fury of the Abbasides. There
was no future for him in the east, so the
thoughts of the ambitious youth turned to
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIiV. 67
the west — to the newly won territory of
Spain.
The coming of this last survivor of the
Omeyyads to Andalusia is one of the ro-
mances of history, and . was not unlike the
coming of another young Pretender to Scot-
land, one thousand years later. It aroused
the same wild enthusiasm, and as if by magic
an army gathered about him, to meet the
army of the Governor, Yusuf, which would
resist him. Victory declared itself for the
Prince, and he entered Cordova in triumph.
Before the year had expired the dynasty of the
Omeyyads — which was to stand for three
centuries — was finally established, and its first
king— Abd-er-Rahman — reigned at Cordova.
His hereditary enemies the Abbasides fol-
lowed him to Spain, and found supporters
among the disaffected. But it was in vain.
The Abbaside army of invasion was utterly
annihilated; and the qualities slumbering in
this son of the Khalifs may be judged when
we relate that the heads of the Abbaside
leaders were put into a bag with descriptive
labels attached to their ears, and sent to the
reigning Khalif as a present.
This little incident does not seem to have
68 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
injured him in the estimation of Mansur, the
new Khalif, who said to him: ''Wonder-
ful is this man! Such daring, wisdom, pru-
dence! To throw himself into a distant land;
to profit by the jealousies of the people;
to turn their arms against one another instead
of against himself; to win homage and obedi-
ence through such difficulties; and to rule
supreme — lord of all! Of a truth there is not
such another man!'' Abd-er-Rahman (the
Sultan, as he was called) merited this praise.
He knew when to be cruel and when to show
mercy; and how to hold scheming Arab chiefs,
fierce, jealous Berbers, and vanquished Chris-
tians, and would placate or crucify as the con-
ditions required.
CHAPTER XL
Charlemagne was at this time building
up his colossal empire. His Christian soul was
mightily stirred by seeing an infidel kingdom
set up in Andalusia; and when, in yy^j, the
Saracen governor and two other Arab chiefs
appealed to him for aid against the Omeyyad
usurper, Abd-er-Rahman, he eagerly re-
sponded. His grandfather Charles Martel
had driven these infidels back over the Pyren-
ees; now he would drive them out of Spain,
and reclaim that land for Christianity!
His army never reached farther than Sara-
gossa. He was recalled to France by a revolt
of the recently conquered Saxons, and the
'' Battle of Roncesvalles '' is the historic
monument of the ill-starred attempt. The
battle in itself was insignificant. No action
of such small importance has ever been in-
vested with such a glamour of romance,
nor the theme of so much legend and
poetry. It has been called the Ther-
69
70 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
mopylae of the Pyrenees, because of the
personal valor displayed, and the tragic
death of the two great Paladins (as the
twelve Peers of Charlemagne were called)
Roland and Olivier. The Chanson de Roland
was one of the famous ballads in the early
literature of Europe, and Roland and Olivier
were to French and Spanish minstrelsy what
the knights of King Arthur vv^ere to the Eng-
lish.
The simple story about which so much has
been written and sung is this: As the retreat-
ing army of Charlemagne was crossing the
Pyrenees, the rear of the army under Roland
and Olivier was ambuscaded in the narrow
pass of Roncesvalles by the Basques and ex-
terminated to a man.
These Basques were the unconquerable
mountain tribe of which we heard so much in
the early history of Spain. They had been on
guard for centuries, keeping the Franks back
from the Pyrenees. They may have been act-
ing under Saracenic influence when they ex-
terminated the rear-guard of Charlemagne's
army. But it was done, not because they
loved the Saracen, but because they had a
hereditary hatred for the Franks.
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 11
Mediaeval Europe never tired of hearing of
the Great Charles' lament over his Roland:
^' O thou right arm of my kingdom, — de-
fender of the Christians, — scourge of the
Saracens! How can I behold thee dead, and
not die myself! Thou art exalted to the
heavenly kingdom, — and I am left alone, a
poor miserable King! "
CHAPTER XII.
The tide which had flowed over southern
Spain was a singular mixture of reHgious fer-
vor, of brutish humanity, and refinements of
wisdom and wickedness. No stranger and
more composite elements were ever thrown
together. Permanence and peace were im-
possible. Nothing but force could hold to-
gether elements so incongruous and antago-
nistic. As soon as the hand of Abd-er-Rah-
man I. was removed disintegration began.
Clashing races, clans, and political parties had
in a few years made such havoc that it seemed
as if the Omeyyad dynasty was crumbling.
It might have been an Arab who said '' he
cared not w^ho made the laws of his country,
so he could write its songs.'' Learning, litera-
ture, refinements of luxury and of art had
taken possession of the land, which seemed
given up to the muses. When in 822 Abd-
er-Rahman II. reigned, he did not trouble
himself about the laws of his crumbling em-
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 73
pire. The one man in whom he delighted was
Ziryab, What Petronius was to Nero,"^ and
Beau Brummel to George IV., that was
Ziryab to the Sultan Abd-er-Rahman 11. , the
elegant arbiter in matters of taste. From the
dishes which should be eaten to the clothes
which should be worn, he was the supreme
judge; while at the same time he knew by
heart and could '' like an angel sing '' one
thousand songs to his adoring Sultan.
Even the Gothic Christians were seduced
by these alluring refinements. They felt con-
tempt for their old Latin speech and for their
literature, with the tiresome asceticism it
eternally preached. The Christian ideal had
grown to be one of penance and mortification
of the flesh, and to a few ardent souls these
sensuous delights were an open highway to
death eternal. Evilogms became the leader of
this band of zealots. In lamenting the deca-
dence of his people, he wrote, '' hardly one in
a thousand can write a decent Latin letter, and
yet they indite excellent Arabic verse!"
Filled with despairing ardor this man aroused
a few kindred spirits to join him in a desper-
^See "QuoVadis?"
74 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
ate attempt to awaken the benumbed con-
science of the Christians. They could not get
the Moslems to persecute them, but they
might attain martyrdom by cursing the
Prophet; then the infidels, however reluctant,
w^ould be compelled to behead them. This
they did, and one by one perished, to no pur-
pose. The Gothic Christians were not con-
science-stricken as Eulogius supposed they
would be, and there was no general uprising
for the Christian faith.
In 912 the threatened ruin of the dynasty
was arrested by the coming of another Abd-
er-Rahman, third Sultan of that name. Rebel-
lion was put down, and fifty years of wise and
just administration gave solidity to the king-
dom, which also then became a Khalifate.
The Abbaside Khalifs, after the deposition
of the Omeyyads, had removed the Khalifate
from Damascus to Baghdad. But the empire
had extended too far west to revolve about
that distant pivot. Abd-er-Rahman — perhaps
remembering the old feud between his fam-
ily and the Abbasides — determined to as-
sume the spiritual headship of the western part
of the empire. And thereafter, the Mahom-
medan empire — like the Roman — had two
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 75
heads, an Eastern Khalif at Baghdad, and a
Western Khalif at Cordova.
While thus extending his own power the
Khalif was extinguishing every spark of re-
bellion in the south and driving the rebellious
Christians back in the north, and at the same
time he was clothing Cordova with a splendor
which amazed and dazzled even the Eastern
Princes who came to pay court to the great
Khalif. His emissaries were everywhere col-
lecting books for his library and treasure for
his palaces. Cordova became the abode of
learning, and the nursery for science, philoso-
phy, and art, transplanted from Asia. The im-
agination and the pen of an arab poet could
not have overdrawn this wonderful city on the
Guadalquivir, — with its palaces, its gardens,
and fountains, — its 50,000 houses of the aris-
tocracy,— its 700 mosques, — and 900 public
baths, — all adorned with color and carvings
and tracery beautiful as a dream of Paradise.
One hears with amazement of the great
mosque, with its 19 arcades, its pavings of
silver and rich mosaics, its 1293 clustered
columns, inlaid with gold and lapis-lazuli, the
clusters reaching up to the slender arches
which supported the roof; the whole of this
76 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
marvelous scene lighted by countless brazen
lamps made from Christian Sells, while
hundreds of attendants swung censers, filling
the air with perfume.
After the ravages of a thousand years trav-
elers stand amazed to-day before the forest of
columns which open out in endless vistas in
the splendid ruin, calling up visions of
the vanished glories of Cordova and the Great
Khalif.
There is not time to tell of the city this
Spanish Khalif built for his favorite wife,
" The Fairest," and which he called " Hill of
the Bride,'' upon which for fifteen years ten
thousand men worked daily; nor of the four
thousand columns which adorned its palaces,
presents from emperors and potentates in
Constantinople, Rome, and far-ofif Eastern
states; nor of the ivory and ebony doors,
studded with jewels, through which shone the
sun, the light then falling on the lake of quick-
silver, which sent back blinding, quivering
flashes into dazzled eyes. And we are told of
the thirteen thousand male servants who min-
istered in this palace of delight. All this, too,
at a time when our Saxon ancestors were liv-
ing in dwellings without chimneys, and cast-
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 77
ing the bones from the table at which they
feasted into the foul straw which covered their
floors; when a Gothic night had settled
upon Europe, and blotted out civilization so
completely that only in a part of Italy, and
around Constantinople, did there remain a
vestige of refinement!
It is said that when the embassy from Con-
stantinople came bearing a letter to the Kha-
lif, the courtier whose duty it was to read it
was so awed by all this splendor that he
fainted !
And yet the owner and creator of this fabu-
lous luxury, — Sultan and Khalif of a dominion
the greatest of his time, and with '' The Fair-
est '' for his adored wife, — when he came to
die, left a paper upon which he had wTitten
that he could only recall fourteen days in
which he had been happy.
CHAPTER XIII.
In the north there was developing another
and very different power. The descendants
of the Visigoth Kings, making common cause
with the rough mountaineers, had shared all
their hardships and rigors in the mountains of
the Asturias. Inured to privation and suf-
fering, entirely unacquainted with luxury or
even with the comforts of living, they had
grown strong, and in a century after Alfonso
I. had emerged from their mountain shelter
and removed their court and capital from
Oviedo to Leon, where Alfonso III. held sway
over a group of barren kingdoms, poor,
proud, but with Hidalgo and Dons, who were
keeping alive the sacred fires of patriotism and
of religion. This was the rough cradle of a
Spanish nationality.
They had their own jealousies and fierce
conflicts, but all united in a common hatred
of the Moor. Though they did not yet
dream of driving him out of their land, their
78
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 79
brave leaders, Ramiro I. and Ordono I.
had been for years steadily defying and tor-
menting him with the kind of warfare to
which they give its name — guerrilla — meaning
" little wars/'
While the Great Khalif was consolidating
his Moorish kingdom and driving the Chris-
tians back into their mountains, the power of
that people was being weakened by internal
strifes existing between the three adjacent
kingdoms — Leon, Castile, and Navarre. The
headship of Leon was for years disputed by
her ambitious neighbor Castile (so called be-
cause of the numerous fortified castles with
which it was studded), under the leadership
of one Fernando, Count of Castile.
There had been the usual lapse into anarchy
and weakness after the Great Khalif's death.
Andalusia always needed a master, and this
she found in Almanzor, who was Prime Min-
ister to one of the Khalif's feeble descendants.
It was a sad day for the struggling kingdom
in the north when this all-subduing man took
the reins in his own hands, and left his young
master to amuse himself in collecting rare
manuscripts and making Cordova more beau-
tiful.
8o A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
This Almanzor, the mightiest of the sol-
diers of the Crescent since Tarik and Musa,
proclaimed a war of faith against the Chris-
tians, who were obliged to forget their local
dissensions and to try with their com-
bined strength to save their kingdom from ex-
termination. These were the darkest days to
which they had yet been subjected. But for
the death of Almanzor the ruin of the Chris-
tian state would have been complete. A
monkish historian thus records this wel-
come event: '' In 1002 died Almanzor, and
was buried in hell."
The death of Almanzor was the turning
point in the fortunes of the two kingdoms —
that of the Moors and of the Christians.
Never again would Cordova be called the
'' Bride of Andalusia.'' The magnificence
and the glory of the kingdom faded like the
mist before the morning sun. Eight years
after the death of Almanzor anarchy and ruin
reigned in Cordova. The gentle, studious
youth who was Khalif, was dragged with his
only child to a dismal vault attached to the
great mosque; and here, in darkness and cold
and damp, sat the grandson of the first Great
Khalif, his child clinging to his breast and
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 8 1
begging in vain for food, his wretched father
pathetically pleading with his jailers for just
a crust of bread, and a candle to relieve the
awful darkness.
The brutal Berbers now had their turn. The
library, with its four hundred thousand price-
less books, was in ashes. They were in the
'' City of the Fairest." Palace after palace
was ransacked, and in a few days all that
remained of its exquisite treasures of art
was a heap of blackened stones (loio). The
Christians drew their broken state closer to-
gether, and gathered themselves for a more
aggressive warfare than any yet undertaken.
The time when the Moors were in the throes
of civil war was favorable. The three king-
doms of Asturias, Leon, and Castile were in
1073 united into one '' kingdom of Castile,"
under Alfonso VI., who had already made
great inroads upon the Moslem territory and
laid many cities under tribute. With this
event, the name Castilian comes into Spanish
history, and from thenceforth that name rep-
resents all that is proudest, bravest, and most
characteristic of the part of the race which
traces a direct lineage from the ancient Visi-
goth Kings.
32 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
Alfonso had not misjudged his opportunity.
He had traversed Spain with his army, and
bathed in the ocean in sight of the '' Pillars of
Hercules." His great general Rodrigo Diaz,
known as '' My Cid, the Challenger," had cut
another path all the way to Valencia, where
he reigned as a sort of uncrowned king; and
he will forever reign as crowned king in the
realm of romance and poetry; the perfect em-
bodiment of the knightly idea — the '' Chal-
lenger," w^ho, in defense of the faith, would
stand before great armies and defy them to
single combat! Whether ''My Cid" ever
did such mighty deeds as are ascribed to him,
no one knows. But he stands for the highest
ideal of his time. He was the '' King Ar-
thur " of Spanish history; and so valiantly did
he serve the Christian cause that the Moors
were driven to a most disastrous step. With
the Cid in Valencia, with Alfonso VI. march-
ing a victorious army through the Moslem
territory, and with Toledo, the city of the
ancient Visigoth Kings, repossessed, it looked
as if, after almost four hundred years, the
Christians were about to recover their
land.
The Moors, thoroughly frightened, realiz-
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 83
ing how helpless they had grown, resolved
upon a desperate measure.
There was, on the opposite African coast,
a sect of Berber fanatics, fierce and devout,
known as '' saints," but which the Moors
called Almoravides. Fighting for the faith
was their occupation. What more fitting
than to use them as a means of driving the in-
fidel Christians out of Moslem territory!
They came, like a cloud of locusts, and set-
tled upon the land. Yusuf, their general, led
his men against Alfonso's Castilians October
23, 1086. Near Badajos the attack was made
simultaneously in front and rear, crushing
them utterly; Alfonso barely escaping with
five hundred men. This was only the first of
many other crushing defeats; the most dis-
heartening of which was the one in 1099, when
the Cid, fighting in allianc^ with Pedro, King
of Aragon, was defeated near Gardia, on the
seacoast. Then the great warrior's heart
broke, and he died; and we are told he was
clothed cap-a-pie in shining armor and placed
upright on his good steed Bavieca, his trusty
sword in his hand — and so he passed to his
burial; his banner borne and guarded by five
hundred knights. And we are also told the
34 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
Moors wonderingly watched his departure
with his knights, not suspecting that he was
dead.
The object of the Moors in inviting the
odious Almoravides had been accomphshed;
the Christians had been driven out of Anda-
kisia back into their own territory; but their
African auxiharies were too well pleased with
their new abode to think of leaving it. One
by one the Moorish Princes were subdued by
the men whose aid they had invoked, until a
dynasty of the Almoravides was fastened upon
Spain. To the refined Spanish Arabs con-
tact with these savages from the desert w^as a
terrible scourge, and so far as they were able
they withdrew into communities by them-
selves, leaving these African locusts to devour
their substance and dim their glory.
But luxury was not favorable to the invad-
ers. In another generation their martial
spirit was gone and they had become only
ignorant, sodden voluptuaries; and when the
Christians once more renewed their attacks,
they failed to repel them as Yusuf had done
thirty years before.
There was another fanatical sect, be-
yond the Atlas range in Africa, which had
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 85
long been looking for a coming Messiah,
whom they called the Mahdi. They were
known as the Alhomades. A son of a lamp-
lighter in the Mosque of Cordova one day pre-
sented himself before the Alhomades, and an-
nounced that he was the great Mahdi, who was
divinely appointed to lead them, and to bring
happiness to all the earth.
The path this Mahdi desired to lead them
was first to Morocco, there to subdue the Al-
moravides in their own land, and thence to
Spain. In a short time this entire plan was
realized. The Mahdi's successor was Emperor
of Morocco, and by the year 11 50 included in
his dominion was all of Mahommedan Spain!
The Spanish Arabs, when they were fighting
Alfonso 11. and the '' Cid," did not antici-
pate this disgraceful downfall from people of
their own faith. They abhorred these Ma-
hommedan savages, and drew together still
closer for a century more in and about their
chosen refuge of Granada.
In the early part of the thirteenth century
the Emperor of Morocco made such enor-
mous preparations for the occupation of Spain
that a larger design upon Europe became
manifest. Once more Christendom was
86 4 SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
alarmed; not since Charles Martel had the
danger appeared so great. The Pope pro-
claimed a Crusade, this time not into Pales-
tine, but Spain.
An army of volunteers from the kingdom of
Portugal and from southern France re-en-
forced the great armies of the Kings of Cas-
tile/Aragon, and Navarre. The Crusaders, as
they called themselves, assembled at Toledo
July 12, 1212, under the command of Alfonso
IX., King of Castile. The power of the Al-
homades was broken, and they were driven
out of Spain. The once great Mahommedan
Empire in that country was reduced to the
single province of Granada, v/here the Moors
intrenched themselves in their last stronghold.
For nearly three centuries the Crescent was
going to wave over the kingdom of Granada;
but it was to shine in only the pale light of a
waning crescent, until its final extinction in
the full light of a Christian day.
CHAPTER XIV.
A GREAT change had been wrought in
Europe. The Crusades had opened a channel
through which flowed from the East reviving
streams of ancient knowledge and culture
over the arid waste of mediaevalism. France
and England had awakened from their long
mental torpor, Paris was become the center of
an intellectual revival. In England, Roger
Bacon, in his '' Opus Majus," was system-
atizing all existing knowledge and laying a
foundation for a more advanced science and
philosophy for the people, who had only
recently extorted from their wicked King
John the great charter of their liberties.
It was just at this period, when the door had
suddenly opened ushering Europe into a new
life, that the Christian cause in Spain tri-
umphed; and, excepting in the little kingdom
of Granada, the Cross waved from the Pyre-
nees to the sea. After more than four cen-
turies of steadfast devotion to that object, the
87
SS A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
descendants of the Visigoth Kings had come
once more into their inheritance.
They found it enriched, and clothed with a
beauty of which their ancestors could never
have dreamed. These Spaniards had learned
their lesson of valor in the north, and they
had learned it well. Now in the land of the
Moor, dwelling in the palaces they had built,
and gazing upon masterpieces of Arabic art
and architecture which they had left, they
were to learn the subtle charm of form and
color, and the fascination which music and
poetry and beauty and knowledge may lend
to life. As they drank from these Moorish
fountains the rugged warriors found them
very sweet; and they discovered that there
were other pleasures in life beside fighting the
Moors and nursing memories of the Cid and
their vanished heroes.
The territory of Ferdinand III., King of Cas-
tile (1230-52), extended now from the Bay of
Biscay to the Guadalquivir. The ancient city
of Seville was chosen as his capital. It was a
far cry from the '' Cave of Covadonga "
to the Moorish palace of the '' Alcazar," where
dwelt the pious descendant of Pelayo! The
first act of Fernando III. was to convert the
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 89
Mosque at Seville into a cathedral, which
still stands with its Moorish bell-tower, the
beautiful *' Giralda." There may also be seen
to-day over one of its portals a stuffed croco-
dile, which was sent alive to King Ferdinand
by the Sultan of Egypt. And within the
cathedral, in a silver urn with glass sides, the
traveler may also gaze to-day upon the re-
mains of this '' Saint Ferdinand " clothed in
royal robes, and with a crown upon his head.
Spain had begun to lift up her head among
the other nations of Europe. To defeat the
Crescent was the highest ideal of that chival-
ric age. Spain, longer than any other nation,
had fought the Mahommedan. It had been
her sole occupation for four centuries, and
now she had vanquished him, and driven
him into the mountains of one of her
smallest provinces, there to hide from the
Spaniards as they had once hidden from the
Moors in the North. This was a pass-
port to the honor and respect of other Chris-
tian nations. She was Spain '' the Catholic "
— the loved and favorite child of the
Church — and great monarchs in England,
France, and Germany bestowed their sons and
daughters upon her kings and princes. Poor
90 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
though she was in purse, and somewhat rude
yet in manners, she held up her head high in
proud consciousness of her aristocratic Hne-
age, and her unmatched championship of
Christianity.
We reahze how close had become the tie
binding her to other nations when we learn
that King Ferdinand III. was the grandson
of Queen Eleanor of England (daughter of
Henry II.), and that Louis IX. of France, that
other royal saint, was his own cousin; and also
that his wife Beatrix, whom he brought with
him to Seville, was daughter of the Emperor
of Germany.
The deep hold which Arabic life and
thought had taken upon their conquerors was
shown when Alfonso X., son of Ferdinand,
came to the throne. So in love was he with
learning and science that he let his kingdom
fall into utter confusion while he busied him-
self with a set of astronomical tables upon
which his heart was set and in holding up to
ridicule the Ptolemaic theory. If he had
givei. less thought to the stars, and more to
the humble question as to who was to be his
successor, it would have saved much strife and
suffering to those who came after him.
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 91
While the Moslems were building up their
kingdom and making of their capital city a
second and even more beautiful Cordova, there
was a partial truce with the Moors in Granada.
Moors and Christians were enemies still; the
hereditary hatreds were only lulled into tem-
porary repose. But Christian knights who
were handsome and gallant might love and
woo Moorish maidens who were beautiful;
and, as a writer has intimated, love became
the business and war the pastime of the Span-
iard in Andalusia. Spain was unconsciously
inbibing the soft, sensuous charm of the civili-
zation she was exterminating; and the peculiar
rhythm of Spanish music, and the subtle
picturesqueness which makes the Spanish peo-
ple unique among the other Latin nations of
Europe, came, not from her Gothic, nor her
Roman, nor her Phenician ancestry, but from
the plains of Arabia; and the guitar and the
dance and the castanet, and the charm and
the coquetry of her women, are echoes from
that far-off land of poetry and romance. Not
so the bull-fight! Would you trace to its
source that pleasant pastime, you must not
go to the East; the Oriental was cruel to man,
but not to beast. He would have abhorred
92 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
such a form of amusement, for the origin of
which we must look to the barbarous Kelt;
or perhaps, as is more probable, to the mys-
terious Iberians, since among the Latin peo-
ples of Europe bull-fighting is found in Spain
alone. Well was it for Spain that her rough,
untutored ancestors were kept hiding in the
mountains for centuries, while that brilliant
Oriental race planted their Peninsula thick
with the germs of high thinking and beau-
tiful living.
As the spider, after his gHstening habitation
has been destroyed by some ruthless footstep,
goes patiently to work to rebuild it, so the
Moor in Granada, with his imperishable in-
stinct for beauty, was making of his little king-
dom the most beautiful spot in Europe. The
city of Granada was lovelier than Cordova;
its Alhambra more enchanting than had been
the palaces in the '' City of the Fairest."
This citadel, which is fortress and palace in
one, still stands like the Acropolis, looking
out upon the plain from its lofty elevation.
Volumes have been written about its laby-
rinthine halls and corridors and courts, and
the amazing richness of decoration, which still
survives — an inexhaustible mine for artists
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 93
and a shrine for lovers of the beautiful. But
Granada cultivated other things besides the
art of beauty. Nowhere in Europe was there
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries such
advanced thinking, and a knowledge so akin
to our own to-day, as within the borders of
that Moorish kingdom.
CHAPTER XV.
There were other reasons beside the grow-
ing peacefulness of the Spaniards why Gra-
nada was left to develop in comparative secu-
rity for two centuries. It was impossible that
adjacent ambitious kingdoms, such as Na-
varre, Castile, Aragon, Leon, and Portugal,
with indefinite and disputed boundaries, and,
on account of intermarriages between the
kingdoms, with indefinite and disputed suc-
cessions, should ever be at peace. In the
perpetual strife and warfare which prevailed
on account of royal European alliances, the
fate of foreign princes and princesses were
often involved, and hence European states
stood ready to take a hand.
Castile and Aragon had gradually absorbed
the smaller states, excepting Portugal on the
one side and Navarre on the other. The his-
tory of Spain at this time is a history of the
struggles of these two states for supremacy.
The most eventful as well as the most lurid
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 95
period of this prolonged civil war was while
Pedro the Cruel was king of Castile, 1350-
69. This Spanish Nero, when sixteen years
old, commenced his reign by the murder of
his mother. A catalogue of his crimes is im-
possible. Enough to say that assassination
was his remedy, and means of escape, from
every entanglement in which his treacheries
involved him. It was the unhappy fate of
Blanche de Bourbon, sister of Charles V.,
King of France, to marry this King of Castile,
and when he refused to live with her and had
her removed from his palace the Alcazar to a
fortress, and finally poisoned her, the French
King determined to avenge the insult to his
royal house. He allied himself with the King
of Aragon to destroy Pedro, with whom the
King of Aragon was of course at war.
Edward, the '' Black Prince,'' was then
brilliantly invading France and extending the
kingdom of his father Edward III. He was
the kinsman of Pedro, and when appealed to
by his cousin for aid in protecting his king-
dom from the King of Aragon and his French
allies, Edward gallantly consented to help
him ; and in the spring of 1 367, for the second
time, a splendid army advanced through the
96 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
Pass at Roncesvalles, and a great battle,
worthy of a better cause, was fought and
won.
So this most atrocious king — perhaps ex-
cepting Richard III. of England, whom he
resembled — had for his champion the victor of
Cressy and Poictiers. He was restored to his
throne, which had been usurped by his brother
Enrique (or Henry), but in a personal en-
counter with Enrique soon after (which was
artfully brought about by the famous Breton
knight, Bertrand du Guesclin), he met a de-
served fate (1369).
Constanza, the daughter of Pedro the Cruel,
had been married to John of Gaunt (Duke of
Lancester), brother of the Black Prince and
son of Edward HI. As Constanza was the
great-grandmother of Isabella I. of Spain, so
in the veins of that revered Queen there
flowed the blood of the Plantagenets, as well
as that of Pedro.the Cruel!
Because of the number of doubtful pretend-
ers always existing in Spain, disputes about
the royal succession also always existed.
Such a dispute now led to a long war with
Portugal, where King Fernando had really the
most valid hereditary claim to the throne
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN-, 97
made vacant by Pedro's death. If his right
had been acknowledged, Portugal and Spain
would now be united; Isabella would have re-
mained only a poor and devout princess, and
would never have had the power to win a con-
tinent for the world. So impossible is it to
remove one of the links forged by fate, that
we dare not regret even sO' monstrous a reign
as that of Pedro the Cruel!
Enrique's right to the vacant throne of his
brother had two disputants. Besides the
King of Portugal, John of Gaunt, who had
married the lady Constanza, — by virtue of her
rights as daughter of Pedro, — claimed the
crown of Castile. This Plantagenet was actu-
ally proclaimed King of Castile and Leon
(1386). For twenty-five years he vainly
strove to come into his kingdom as sovereign ;
but finally compromised by giving his young
daughter Catherine to the boy '^ Prince of
Asturias," the heir to the throne. He was
obliged to content himself by thus securing to
his child the long-coveted prize. And it was
this Catherine, who at fourteen was betrothed
to a boy of nine, who was the grandmother of
Isabella, Queen of Castile.
When such was the private history of those
98 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
highest in the land we can only imagine
what must have been that of the rest. Feud-
alism, which was a part of Spain's Gothic in-
heritance, had always made that country one
of its strongholds, and chivalry had nowhere
else found so congenial a soil. There was no
great artisan class, as in France, creating a
powerful '' bourgeoisie ''; no " guilds," or sim-
ple '' burghers,'' as in Germany, stubbornly
standing for their rights; no '' boroughs " and
'' town meetings," where the people were
sternly guarding their liberties, as in England.
The history of other nations is that of the
struggles of the common people against the
tyranny of kings and rulers. If there were
any " common people " in Spain, they were
so efifaced that history makes no mention of
them. We hear only of kings and great
barons and glorious knights; and their won-
derful deeds and their valor and prowess — ex-
cepting in the wars with the Moors — were
always over boundary-lines and successions,
or personal quarrels more or less disgraceful,
with never a single high purpose or a principle
involved. It was all a gay, ambitious pageant,
adorned by a mantle of chivalry, and made
sacred by the banner of the Cross. In the
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 99
history of no other European country do we
see a great state develop under despotism so
unredeemed by wholesome ideals, and so un-
mitigated and unrestrained by gentle human
impulses.
CHAPTER XVI.
Juan IL, the son of the young Catherine and
the boy prince of the Asturias, died in 1454,
and his son Enrique (or Henry) IV. was King
of Castile. When, after some years, Henry
was without children, and with health very in-
firm, his young sister Isabella unexpectedly
found herself the acknowledged heir to the
throne of Castile. She suddenly became a
very important young person. The old King
of Portugal was a suitor for her hand,
and a brother of the King of Eng-
land, and also a brother of the King of
France, were striving for the same honor.
But Isabella had very decided views of her
own. Her hero was the young Ferdinand of
Aragon, and heir to that throne. She resisted
all her brother's efforts to coerce her, and
finally took the matter into her own hands by
sending an envoy to her handsome young
lover to come to her at Valladolid, with a
letter telling him they had better be married
at once.
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, loi
Accompanied by a few knights disguised as
merchants, Ferdinand, pretending to be their
servant, during the entire journey waited
on them at table and took care of their mules.
He entered Valladolid, where he was received
by the Archbishop of Toledo, who was in the
conspiracy, and was by him conveyed to Isa-
bella's apartments. We are told that when he
entered someone exclaimed: Ese-es, Ese-es
(that is he) ; and the escutcheon of that knight
has ever since borne a double 5". 5., which
sounds like this exclamation.
The marriage was arranged to take place in
four days. An embarrassment then occurred
of which no one had before thought. Neither
of them had any money. But someone was
found who would lend them enough for the
wedding expenses, and so on the 19th of
October, 1469, the most important marriage
ever yet consummated in Spain took place — a
marriage which would forever set at rest the
rivalries between Castile and Aragon, and
bring honors undreamed of to a united Spain.
Isabella was fair, intelligent, accomplished,
and lovely. She was eighteen and her boy
husband was a year younger. Of course her
royal brother stormed and raged. But, of
I02 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
course, it did no good. In five years from
that time (1474) he died, and Isabella, royally
attired, and seated on a white palfrey, pro-
ceeded to the throne prepared for her, and
was there proclaimed '* Queen of Castile."
At the end of another five years, Ferdinand
came into his inheritance. His old father,
Juan II., King of Aragon and Navarre, died
in 1479, and Castile, Aragon, and Navarre —
all of Spain except Portugal and Granada —
had come under the double crown of Ferdi-
nand and Isabella.
The war with Portugal still existed, and
their reign began in the midst of confusion
and trouble, but it was brilliant from the out-
set. Ferdinand had great abilities and an
ambition which matched his abilities. Isa-
bella, no less ambitious than he, was more far-
reaching in her plans, and always saw more
clearly than Ferdinand what was for the true
glory of Spain. With infinite tact she soft-
ened his asperities, and disarmed his jeal-
ousy, and ruled her '' dear lord," by making
him believe he ruled her.
A joint sovereignty, with a man so grasping
of power and so jealous of his own rights, re-
quired self-control and tact in no ordinary
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 103
measure. It was agreed at last that in all pub-
lic acts Ferdinand's name should precede hers;
and although her sanction was necessary, his
indignation at this was abated by her promise
of submission to his will. The court of the
new sovereigns w^as established at Seville, and
they took up their abode in that palace so
filled with associations both Moorish and
Castilian — the Alcazar. From the very first
Isabella's powerful mind grappled every pub-
lic question, and she gave herself heart and
soul to what she believed was her divine mis-
sion— the building up of a great Catholic state.
Isabella's devout soul was sorely troubled
by the prevalence of Judaism in her king-
dom. She took counsel wdth her confessor,
and also with the Pope, and by their advice a
religious tribunal was established at Seville in
1483, the object of which was to inquire of
heretics whether they were willing to re-
nounce their faith and accept Christianity.
The head of this tribunal, w^hich was soon fol-
lowed by others in all the large cites, was a
Dominican friar called Torqucmada. He was
known as the '^ Inquisitor General." Inac-
cessible to pity, mild in manners, humble in
demeanor, yet swayed openly by a sense of
I04 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN'.
duty, this strange being was so cruel that he
seems like an incarnation of the evil principle.
At the tribunal in Seville alone it is said that
in thirty-six years four thousand victims were
consigned to the flames, besides the thousands
more who endured living deaths by torture,
mutilation, and nameless sufferings.
Humanity shudders at the recital! And
yet this monstrous tribunal was the creation of
one of the wisest and gentlest of women, who
believed no rigors could be too great to save
people from eternal death! And, in her mis-
guided zeal, she emptied her kingdom of a peo-
ple who had helped to create its prosperity,
and drove the most valuable part of her popu-
lation into France, Italy, and England, there
to disseminate the seeds of a higher culture
and intelligence which they had imbibed from
contact with the Moors, who had treated them
with such uniform tolerance and gentleness.
The kingdom of Granada was now at the
height of its splendor. Its capital city was
larger and richer than any city in Spain. Its
army was the best equipped of any in Europe.
The Moorish king, a man of fiery temper,
thought the time had come when he
might defy his enemy by refusing to
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 105
pay an annual tribute to which his father
had ten years before consented. When
Ferdinand's messenger, in 1476, came to
demand the accustomed tribute, he said,
'' Go tell your master the kings who
pay tribute in Granada are all dead. Our
mints coin nothing but sword-blades
now.''
The cool and crafty Ferdinand prepared his
own answer to this challenge. The infatuated
King Abdul-Hassan followed up his insult
by capturing the Christian fortress of Zahara.
His temper was not at the best at this time on
account of a war raging in his own household.
His wife Ayesha was fiercely jealous of a
Christian captive whom he had also made his
wife. She had become his favorite Sultana,
and was conspirmg to have her own son sup-
plant Boabdil, the son of Ayesha, the heir to
the throne. In his championship of Zoraya
and her son, Abdul-Hassan imprisoned Aye-
sha and Boabdil, v/hom he threatened to disin-
herit. We are shown to-day the window in
the Alhambra from which Ayesha lowered
Boabdil in a basket, telling him to come back
with an army and assert his rights. Sud-
denly, while absorbed by this smaller war,
lo6 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
news came that Alhama, their most im-
pregnable fortress, only six leagues from the
city of Granada, had been captured by
Ferdinand's army. It was the key to Gra-
nada. Despair was in every soul. The air was
filled with wailing and lamentation. " Woe,
woe is me, Alhama! '' '' Ay de mi, Alhama! ''
Indignant with their old king, who had
brought destruction upon them, when Boab-
dil came with his army of followers, they
flocked about him— " El Rey Chico!'' (the
boy king) as they called him. Abdul Hassan
was forced to fly, and Boabdil reigned over
the expiring kingdom. It was a brief and
troubled reign.
In the famous '' Court of the Lions '' in the
Alhambra, visitors are shown to-day the
blood-stains left by the celebrated massacre
of the '' Abencerrages." The Abencerrages
had supported the claim of Ayesha's rival,
Zoraya; and it is said that Boabdil invited the
Princes of this clan, some thirty in number,
to a friendly conference in the Alhambra, and
there had them treacherously beheaded ^t the
fountain.
But whether this blood-stain upon his
memory is as doubtful as those upon the
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 107
stones at the fountain, seems an open
question.
So stubborn was the defense, it appeared
sometimes as if the reduction of Granada
would have to be abandoned. Isabella's
courage and faith were sorely tried. But the
brave Queen infused her own courage
into the flagging spirits of her hus-
band, and kept alive the enthusiasm of the
people; and at last, — on the 2d of January,
1492, — the proud city capitulated. Boabdil
surrendered the keys of the Alhambra to
Ferdinand — the silver cross which had pre-
ceded the King throughout the war gleamed
from a high tower; and from the loftiest pin-
nacle of the Alhambra waved the banners of
Castile and Aragon.
The conflict which had lasted for 781 years
was over. The death of Roderick and the fall
of the Goths was avenged, and Christendom,
still weeping for the loss of Constantinople,
was consoled and took heart again.
CHAPTER XVII.
The reduction of Granada had required
eleven years, and had drained the kingdom of
all its resources. It is not strange that Isa-
bella should have had no time to listen seri-
ously to a threadbare enthusiast asking for
money and ships for a strange adventure! To
have grown old and haggard in pressing an
unsuccessful project is not a passport to the
confidence of Princes. But the gracious
Queen had promised to listen to him when the
war with the Moors was concluded. So
now Columbus soug'ht her out at Granada;
and it is a strange scene which the imagination
pictures — a shabby old man pleading with a
Queen in the halls of the Alhambra for permis-
sion to lift the veil from an unsuspected Hemi-
sphere; artfully dwelling upon the glory of
planting the Cross in the dominions of the
Great Khan! The cool, unimaginative Ferdi-
nand listened contemptuously; but Isabella,
for once opposing the will of her '' dear lord,"
io8
A SHORT HISTORY OF $PAIN, 109
arose and said, '' The enterprise is mine. I
undertake it for Castile." And on the 3d of
August, 1492, the little fleet of caravels sailed
from the mouth of the same river whence had
once sailed the '' ships of Tarshish,'' laden
with treasure for King Solomon and '' Hiram,
King of Tyre.'' A union with Portugal — the
land of the Lusitanians and of Sertorius — was
all that was now required to make of the Span-
ish Peninsula one kingdom. This Isabella
planned to accomplish by the marriage of her
oldest daughter, Isabella, with the King of
Portugal. Her son John, heir to the Spanish
throne, had died suddenly just after his mar-
riage with the daughter of Maximilian, Em-
peror of Germany.
This terrible blow was swiftly followed by
another, the death of her daughter Isabella,
and also that of the infant which was expected
to unite the kingdoms of Portugal and Spain.
The succession of Castile and Aragon now
passed to Joanna, her second daughter, who
had married Philip, Archduke of Austria and
son of Maximilian, an unfortunate child who
seemed on the verge of madness.
Isabella's youngest daughter, Catherine, be-
came the wife of Henry VIII. of England.
no A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
Happily the mother did not live to witness this
child's unhappiness; but her heart-breaking
losses and domestic griefs were greater than
she could bear. The unbalanced condition of
Joanna, upon whom rested all hopes, w^as un-
dermining her health. The results of the
expedition of Columbus had exceeded the
wildest dreams of romance. Gold was pour-
ing in from the West enough to pay for the
war with the Moors many times over, and for
all wars to come. Spain, from being the
poorest, had suddenly become the richest
country in Europe; richest in .wealth, in terri-
tory, and in the imperishable glory of its dis-
covery. But Isabella, — who had been the in-
strument in this transformation, — who had
built up a firm united kingdom and swept it
clean of heretics, Jews, and Moors, — was still
a sad and disappointed woman, thwarted in
her dearest hopes; and on the 26th of Novem-
ber, 1504, she died leaving the fruits of her
triumphs to a grandson six years old.
This infant Charles was proclaimed King of
Castile under the regency of his ambitious
father, the Archduke of Austria, and his in-
sane mother. The death of the Archduke
and the incapacity of Joanna in a few years
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, m
gave to Ferdinand the control of the two king-
doms for which he had contended and
schemed, until his own death in 1516, when
the crowns of Castile and Aragon passed to
his grandson, who was proclaimed Charles I.,
King of Spain.
A plain, sedate youth of sixteen was called
from his home in Flanders to assume the
crowns of Castile and Aragon. Silent, re-
served, and speaking the Spanish language
very imperfectly, the impression produced by
the young King was very unpromising. No
one suspected the designs which were matur-
ing under that mask; nor that this boy was
planning to grasp all the threads of diplomacy
in Europe, and to be the master of kings.
In 1 5 17 Maximilian died, leaving a vacant
throne in Germany to be contended for by the
ambitious Francis I. of France and Maxi-
milian's grandson, Charles.
It was a question of supremacy in Europe.
So the successful aspirant must win to himself
Leo X., Henry VIII. and his great minister
Wolsey, and after that the Electors of Ger-
many. It required consummate skill. Fran-
cis I. was an able player. The astute Wolsey
made the moves for his master Henry VIII.,
112 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
keeping a watchful eye on Charles, '' that
young man who looks so modest, and soars so
high "; while Leo X., unconscious of the com-
ing Reformation, was craftily aiding this side
or that as benefit to the Church seemed to be
promised.
But that '' modest young man '' played the
strongest game. Charles was, by the unani-
mous vote of the Electors, raised to the im-
perial throne; and the grandson of Isabella,
as Charles I. of Spain and Charles V. of Ger-
many, possessed more power than had been
exercised by any one man since the reign of
Augustus. The territory over which he had
dominion in the New World was practically
without limit. Mexico surrendered to Cortez
(1521) and Peru to Pizarro (1532); Ponce de
Leon was in Florida and de Soto on the banks
of the Mississippi; while wealth, fabulous in
amount, was pouring into Spain, and from
thence into Flanders.
The history of Charles belongs, in fact,
more to Europe than to Spain. No sHghtest
tenderness seems to have existed in his cold
heart for the land of Isabella, which he seemed
to regard simply as a treasury from which to
draw money for the objects to which he was
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 113
really devoted. So, in fact, Spain was gov-
erned by an absolute despot whO' was Em-
peror of Germany, where he resided, and she
visibly declined from the strength and pros-
perity which had been created by the wise and
personal administration of Ferdinand and
Isabella.
The Cortes, where the deputies had never
been allowed the privilege of debate, had
been at its best a very imperfect expression of
popular sentiment; and now was reduced to a
mere empty form. Abuses which had been
corrected under the vigilant personal ad-
ministration of two able and patriotic sov-
ereigns returned in aggravated form. Mis-
rule and disorder prevailed, while their King
was absorbed in the larger field of European
politics and diplomacy.
The light in which Spain shines in this,
which is always accounted her most glorious
period, was that of Discovery and Conquest,
and the enormous wealth coming therefrom;
all of which was bestowed by that shabby ad-
venturer and suppliant at the Alhambra, in
whom Isabella alone believed, and who, after
enriching Spain beyond its wildest expecta-
tions, was permitted to die in poverty and neg-
114 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN-.
lect at Valladolid in 1506! History has writ-
ten its verdict: imperishable renown to Co-
lumbus, Balboa, Magellan, and the navigators
who dared such perils and won so much; and
eternal infamy to the men who planted a
bloodstained Cross in those distant lands.
The history of the West Indies, of Mexico,
and Peru is unmatched for cruelty in the an-
nals of the world; and Isabella's is the only
voice that was ever raised in defense of the
gentle, helpless race which was found in those
lands.
- The Reformation, which had commenced in
Germany with the reign of Charles V., had
assumed enormous proportions. Charles,
who was a bigot with '' heart as hard as ham-
mered iron," was using with unsparing hand
the Inquisition, that engine of cruelty created
by his grandmother. And while his captains,
the '' conquistadors,'' were burning and tor-
turing in the West, he was burning and tortur-
ing in the East. His entire reign was occu-
pied in a struggle with his ambitious rival
Francis L, and another and vain struggle with
the followers of Luther.
He had married Isabel, the daughter of the
King of Portugal. Philip, his son and heir,
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 115
was born in 1527. The desire of his heart
was to secure for this son the succession to
the imperial throne of Germany. To this the
electors would not consent. He was defeated
in the two objects dearest to his heart: the
power to bequeath this imperial possession to
Philip, and the destruction of Protestantism.
So this most powerful sovereign since the day
of Charlemagne felt himself ill-used by Fate.
Weary and sick at heart, in the year 1556 he
abdicated in favor of Philip. The Nether-
lands was his own to bestbw upon his son, as
that was an inheritance from his father, the
Archduke of Austria. So the fate of Philip
does not seem to us so very heart-breaking,
as, upon the abdication of his father, he was
King of Spain, of Naples, and of Sicily; Duke
of Milan; Lord of the Netherlands and of the
Indies, and of a vast portion of the American
continent stretching from the Atlantic to the
iPacific!
Such was the inheritance left to his son by
the disappointed man who carried his sorrows
to the monastery at St. Yuste, where the
austerities and severities he practiced finally
cost him his life (1558). But let no one sup-
pose that these penances were on account of
Ii6 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
cruelties practiced upon his Protestant sub-
jects! From his cloister he wrote to the
inquisitors adjuring them to shoAv no mercy;
to deliver all to the flames, even if they should
recant; and the only regret of the dying peni-
tent was that he had not executed Luther!
CHAPTER XVIII.
Philip established his capital at Madrid,
and commenced the Palace of the Escurial,
nineteen miles distant, which stands to-day as
his monument. His coronation was celebrated
by an auto-da-fe at Valladolid, which it is said
'' he attended with much devotion/' One of
the victims, an officer of distinction, while
awaiting his turn said to him: '' Sire, how can
you witness such tortures? '' ^^ Were my own
son in your place I should witness it,'' was the
reply; which was a key to the character of the
man.
He asserted his claim through his mother,
the Princess Isabel of Portugal, to the throne
of that country, and after a stubborn contest
with the Lusitanians, the long-desired union
of Spain and Portugal was accomplished.
This event was celebrated by Cervantes in a
poem which extravagantly lauds his sover-
ereign. Henry VHI. had been succeeded in
England by Mary, daughter of his unhappy
Il8 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
Queen, Catherine of Aragon, who, it will be
remembered, was the daughter of Ferdinand
and Isabella. Mary had inherited the intense
religious fervor and perhaps the cruel in-
stincts of her mother's family, and she quickly
set about restoring Protestant England to the
Catholic faith. Philip saw in a union with
Mary and a joint sovereignty over England,
such as he hoped would follow, an immense
opportunity for Spain. The marriage took
place with great splendor, and in the desire to
please her handsome husband, of whom she
was very fond, she commenced the work
which has given her the title, " Bloody Mary.''
In vain were human torches lighted to lure
Philip from Spain, where he lingered. She
did not win his love, nor did Philip reign
conjointly with his royal consort in England.
Mary died in 1558, and her Protestant sister
Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, was
Queen of England.
Philip had made up his mind that Protest-
antism should be exterminated in his king-
dom of the Netherlands. He could not go
there himself, so he looked about for a suita-
ble instrument for his purpose. The Duke of
Alva was the man chosen. He was ap-
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 119
pointed Viceroy, with full authority to carry
out the pious design. Heresy must cease to
exist in the Netherlands. The arrival of Alva,
clothed with such despotic powers, and the
atrocities committed by him, caused the
greatest indignation in the Netherlands. The
Prince of Orange, aided by the Counts
Egmont and Horn, organized a party to re-
sist him, and a revolution was commenced
which lasted for forty years, affording one of
the blackest chapters in the history of Europe.
The name of Alva stands at the head of the
list of men who have wrought desolation and
suffering in the name of religon. The other
European states protested, and EHzabeth, in
hot indignation, gave aid to the persecuted
states.
Philip had contracted a marriage, after
Mary's death, with the daughter of that ter-
rible woman Catherine de Medici, widow of
Henry H. of France, and there is every rea-
son to believe that it was this Duke of Alva
who planned the Massacre of St. Bartholo-
mew. There were sinister conferences be-
tween Catherine, Philip, and Alva, and little
doubt exists that the hideous tragedy which
occurred in Paris on the night of August 24,
I20 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
1572, was arranged in Madrid, and had its first
inception in the cruel breast of Alva.
There had not been much love existing be-
fore between Philip and Elizabeth, who it is
said had refused the hand of her Spanish
brother-in-law. But after her interference in
the Netherlands, and when her ships were in-
tercepting and waylaying Spanish ships
returning with treasure from the West, and
when at last the one was the accepted cham-
pion of the Protestant, and the other of the
Catholic cause, they became avowed enemies.
Philip resolved to prepare a mighty armament
for the invasion of England.
In 1587 Elizabeth sent Sir Francis Drake
to reconnoiter and find out what Philip was
doing. He appeared with twenty-five ves-
sels before Cadiz. Having learned all he
wanted, and burned a fleet of merchant ves-
sels, he returned to his Queen.
In May, 1588, a fleet of one hundred and
thirty ships, some '' the largest that ever
plowed the deep," sailed from Lisbon for the
English coast. We may form some idea to-
day of what must have been the feeling in
England when this Armada, unparalleled in
size, appeared in the English Channel. If
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 121
Sir Francis Drake's ships were fewer and
smaller, he could match the Spaniards in au-
dacity. He sent eight fireships right in
among the close-lying vessels. Then, in the
confusion Vv^hich followed, while they were
obstructed and entangled with their own
fleet, he swiftly attacked them with such vigor
that ten ships were sunk or disabled, and the
entire fleet was demoralized. Then a storm
overtook the fleeing vessels, and the winds and
the waves completed the victory. As in the
Spanish report of the disaster thirty-five is the
number of ships acknowledged to be lost, we
may imagine how great was the destruction.
So ended Philip's invasion of England, and
the great Spanish '' Armada."
Philip IL died, 1598, in the Palace of the
Escurial which he had built, and with that
event ends the story of Spain's greatness.
The period of one hundred and twenty-five
years, including the reigns of Ferdinand and
Isabella, of Charles V., and of Philip II. , is, in
a way, one of unmatched splendor. Spain
had not like England by slow degrees ex-
panded into great proportions, but through
strange and perfectly fortuitous circum-
stances, she had, from a proud obscurity, sud-
122 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
denly leaped into a position of commanding
power and magnificence. Fortune threw into
her lap the greatest prize she ever had to be-
stow, and at the same time gave her two
sovereigns of exceptional qualities and abili-
ties. The story of this double reign is the
romance, the fairy tale of history. Then
came the magnificent reign of Charles V. with
more gifts from fortune-^the imperial crown,
if not a substantial benefit to Spain, still bring-
ing dignity and eclat. But under this glitter-
ing surface there had commenced even then
a decline. Under Philip 11. she was still mag-
nificent, Europe was bowing down to her, but
the decline was growing more manifest; and
with the accession of his puny son, Philip III.,
there was little left but a brilHant past, which
a proud and retrospective nation was going to
feed upon for over three centuries. But it
takes some time for such dazzling effulgence
to disappear. The glamour of the Spanish
name was going to last a long time and pic-
turesquely veil her decay. The memory of
such an ascendancy in Europe nourished the
intense national pride of her people. The
name Castilian took on a new significance.
Nor can we wonder at their pride in the
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 123
name '' Castilian/' Its glory was not the
capricious gift of fortune, but won by a devo-
tion, a constancy, and a fidelity of purpose
which are unique in the history of the world.
For seven hundred years the race for which
that name stands had kept alive the national
spirit, while their land was occupied by an
alien civilization. These were centuries of
privation and suffering and hardship; but
never wavering in their purpose, and by
brave deeds which have filled volumes, they
reclaimed their land and drove out the
Moors.
This is what gives to the name '' Castilian,"
its proud significance. But when degenerate
Hidalgos and Grandees, debauched by wealth
and luxury, gloried in the name; when by
rapacity and cruelty they destroyed the lands
their valor had won; and when the Inquisition
became their pastime and the rack and the
wheel their toys — then the name Castilian be-
gan to take on a sinister meaning. Spain's
most glorious period was not when she was
converting the Indies and Mexico and Peru
into a hell, not when Charles V. was playing
his great game of diplomacy in Europe, but
in that pre-Colitmbian era when a brave and
124 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
rugged people were keeping alive their na-
tional life in the mountains of the Asturias.
Well may Spain do honor to that time by call-
ing the heir to her throne the '' Prince of the
Asturias!"
CHAPTER XIX.
The history of the century after the
death of Philip 11. is one of rapid de-
cline; with no longer a powerful master-
mind to hold the state together. Every
year saw the court at Madrid more splen-
did, and the people, — that insignificant
factor, — more wretched, and sinking deeper
and deeper into poverty. In fact, in spite
of the fabulous wealth which fortune had
poured upon her, Spain was becoming poor.
But nowhere in Europe was royalty invested
with such dignity and splendor of ceremonial,
and the ambitious Marie de Medici, widow of
Henry IV., was glad to form alliances for her
children with those of Philip HI. The
'' Prince of the Asturias," who was soon to
become Philip IV., married her daughter, Isa-
bella de Bourbon, and the Infanta, his sister,
was at the same time married to the young
Louis XIII. , King of France.
The remnant of the Moors who still
^25
126 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
lingered in the land were called Moriscos;
and under a very thin surface of sub-
mission to Christian Spain, they nursed
bitter memories and even hopes that some
miracle would some day restore them to what
was really the land of their fathers. A very
severe edict, promulgated by Philip IL, com-
pelling conformity in all respects with Chris-
tian living, and — as if that were not a part of
Christian living — forbidding ablutions, led to
a serious revolt. And this again led to the
forcible expulsion of every Morisco in Spain.
In 1609, by order of PhiHp III., the last of
the Moors were conveyed in galleys to the
African coast whence they had come just nine
hundred years before.
In a narrative so drenched with tears, it is
pleasant to hear of light-hearted laughter.
We are told that when the young King Philip
III. saw from his window a man striking his
forehead and laughing immoderately he said:
'' That man is either mad, or he is reading
' Don Quixote ' " — which latter was the case.
But the story written by Cervantes did more
than entertain. Chivalry had lingered in the
congenial soil of Spain long after it had disap-
peared in every other part of Europe; but
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 127
when in the person of Don Quixote it was
made to appear so utterly ridiculous, it was
heard of no more.
Philip III., who died in 1621, was succeeded
by his son Philip IV. As in the reign of his
father worthless favorites ruled, while a profli-
gate king squandered the money of the people
in lavish entertainments and luxuries. Much
has been written about the visit of Charles,
Prin<:e of Wales (afterward Charles I.), accom-
panied by the Duke of Buckingham, at his
court; whither the young Prince had come
disguised, to see the Infanta, Philip's sister,
whom he thought of making his queen.
Probably she did not please him, or perhaps
the alliance with Protestant England was not
acceptable to the pious Catholic family of
Philip. At all events, Henrietta, sister of
Louis XIII. of France, was his final choice,
and shared his terrible misfortunes a few years
later.
A revolt of the Catalonians on the French
frontier led to a difficulty with France, which
was finally adjusted by the celebrated '' treaty
of the Pyrenees.'' In this treaty was inckided
the marriage of the young King Louis XIV.
and Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV.,
128 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
the King of Spain. The European Powers
would only consent to this union upon con-
dition that Louis should solemnly renounce
all claim to the Spanish cro\vn for himself and
his heirs; which promise had later a somewhat
eventful history.
Seven of the United Provinces had achieved
their independence dunng the reign of the
third Philip, who had also driven out of his
kingdom six hundred thousand Moriscos; by
far the most skilled and industrious portion of
the community. And now, at the close of the
reign of Philip IV., the kingdom was further
dimnished by the loss of Portugal; which, in
1664, the Lusitanians recovered, and pro-
claimed the Duke of Braganza King. When
we add to this the loss of much of the Nether-
lands, and of the island of Jamaica, and con-
cessions here and there to France and to Italy,
it will be obvious that a process of contraction
had soon followed that of Spain's phenome-
nal expansion!
During the reign of Charles II., who suc-
ceeded his father (1665), Spain was still fur-
ther diminished by the cession to Louis XIV.,
in 1678, of more provinces in the Low Coun-
tries, which included the region now known
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 129
as Alsace and Lorraine; which, it will be re-
membered, have in our own time passed from
the keeping of France to that of victorious
Germany.
There is one more incident in this reign
which deserves at this time a passing notice.
It was between the years 1670 and 1686 that
the Spaniard and the Anglo-Saxon had their
first collision in America. St. Augustine had
been founded in 1565, and the old Spanish
colony was much disturbed in 1663, when
Charles II. of England planted an English
colony in their near neighborhood (the Caro-
linas). During a war between Spain and
England at the time above mentioned, feeling
ran high between Florida and the Carolinas,
and houses were burned and blood was shed.
Spain had felt no concern about the little Eng-
lish colony planted on the bleak New England
coast in 1620. Death by exposure and star-
vation promised speedily to remove that. But
the settlement on the Carolinas was more seri-
ous, and at the same time the French were
planting a colony of their own at the mouth
of the Mississippi. The '' lords of America "
began to feel anxious about their control of
the Gulf of Mexico. The cloud was a very
130 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
small one, but it was not to be the last which
would dim their skies in the West.
The one thing which gives historic impor-
tance to the reign of Carlos II. is that it marks
the close — the ignominious close — of the great
Hapsburg dynasty in Spain. And if the death
of Carlos, in 1700, was a melancholy event, it
is because with it the scepter so magnificently
wielded by Ferdinand and Isabella passed to
the keeping of the House of Bourbon, whose
Spanish descendants have ruled Spain ever
since.
CHAPTER XX.
The last century had wrought great changes
in European conditions. '' The Holy Roman
Empire/' after a thirty-years' war with
Protestantism, was shattered, and the Em-
peror of Germany was no longer the head of
Europe. Protestant England had sternly
executed Charles I., and then in the person of
James H. had swept the last of the Catholic
House of Stuart out of her kingdom. France,
on the foundation laid by Richelieu, had de-
veloped into a powerful despotism:, which her
King, Louis XIV., was making magnificent
at home and feared abroad.
For Spain it had been a century of steady
decline, with loss of territory, power, and pres-
tige. No longer great in herself, she was
regarded by her ambitious neighbor, Louis
XIV., as only a make-weight in the supremacy
in Europe upon which he was determined.
He had been ravaging the enfeebled German
Empire, and now a friendly fate opened a
132 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
peaceful door through which he might make
Spain contribute to his greatness.
Carlos 11. died (1700) without an heir.
There was a vacant throne in Spain to which
— on account of Louis' marriage, years before,
with the Spanish Princess Maria Theresa —
his grandson Philip had now the most
valid claim. The other claimant, Archduke
Karl, son of Leopold, Emperor of Germany,
in addition to having a less direct hereditary
descent, was unacceptable to the Spanish peo-
ple, w^ho had no desire to be ruled again
by an occupant of the Imperial throne of
Germany.
So, as Louis wished it, and the Spanish peo-
ple also wished it, there w^as only one obstacle
to his design; that was a promise made at the
time of his marriage that he would never claim
that throne for himself or his heirs. But
when the Pope, after '' prayerful deliberation,"
absolved him from that promise the way was
clear. This grandson, just seventeen years
old, w^as proclaimed Philip V., King of Spain,
and Louis in the fullness of his heart ex-
claimed, '' The Pyrenees have ceased to
exist!"
Perhaps it would have been better for the
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 133
King if he had not made that dramatic
exclamation. A man who could remove
mountains to make a path for his ambitions
might also drain seas! England took warn-
ing. She had been quietly bearing his insults
for a long time, and not till he had imperti-
nently threatened to place upon her throne
the Pretender, an illegitimate son of James 11. ,
had she joined the coalition against the
French King. But now she sent more
armies, and a great captain to re-enforce
Prince Eugene, who was fighting this battle
for the Archduke Karl and for Europe.
But Louis had reached the summit. He
was to go no higher than he had climbed when
he uttered that vain boast. Philip V. was
acknowledged King in 1702, and in 1704
Blenheim had been fought and won by Marl-
borough, and the decline of the Grand
Monarqtie had commenced.
The war against him by a combined Europe
now became the war of the ''Spanish Suc-
cession.'^ England and Holland united with
Emperor Leopold to curb his limitless am-
bition. The purpose of the war of the '' Span-
ish Succession " was, ostensibly, to place the
Austrian Archduke upon the throne of Spain ;
134 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
its real purpose was to check the alarming
ascendancy of Louis XIV. in Europe.
It lasted for years, the poor young King
and Queen being driven from one city to an-
other, while the Austrian Archduke was at
Madrid striving to reign over a people wljo
would not recognize him.
Spain was being made the sport of three
nations in pursuance of their own ambitious
ends. Her land was being ravaged by foreign
armies, recruited from three of her own dis-
affected provinces; while a young King with
whom she was well satisfied was peremptorily
ordered to make way for one Austria, Eng-
land, and Holland preferred. It was a
humiliating proof of the decline in national
spirit, and the old Castilian pride must have
sorely degenerated for such things to be pos-
sible.
Finally, after Louis XIV. had once more
given solemn oath that the crowns of France
and Spain should never be united, the '' Peace
of Utrecht '' was signed (171 3). But the pro-
visions of the treaty were momentous for
Spain. She was at one stroke of the pen
stripped of half her possessions in Europe.
Philip V. w^as acknowledged King of Spain
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 135
and the Indies. But Sicily, with its regal
title, was ceded to the Duke of Savoy; Milan,
Naples, Sardinia, and the Netherlands went
to Karl, now Emperor Charles VI. of Ger-
many; while Minorca and Gibraltar passed to
the keeping of England.
No one felt unmixed satisfaction, except
perhaps England. The Archduke had failed
to get his throne, and to wear the double
crown like Charles V. Louis had carried his
point. He had succeeded in keeping the
kingdom for his grandson. But that king-
dom was dismembered, and had shrunk to in-
significant proportions in Europe, while Eng-
land, most fortunate of all, had carried off the
key to the Mediterranean. That little rocky
promontory of Gibraltar was potentially of
more value than all the rest!
Such was the beginning of the dynasty of
the Bourbon in Spain. Philip was succeeded,
upon his death in 1746, by his son Ferdinand
VI., who also died, in 1759, ^^^ was succeeded
by his brother, Philip's second son, who was
known as Carlos III. When we try to praise
these princes of the wretched Bourbon line, it
is by mention of the evil they have refrained
from doing rather than the good they have
136 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
done. So Carlos III. is said to have done
less harm to Spain than his predecessors. He
established libraries and academies of science
and of arts, and ruled like a kind-hearted gen-
tleman, without the vices of his recent prede-
cessors. His severity toward the Jesuits and
their forcible expulsion from Spain, in 1767,
are said to have been caused by personal re-
sentment on account of some slanderous
rumors regarding his birth, which were traced
to them.
CHAPTER XXI.
But the fate of Spain was not now in the
hands of her Kings. Be they good or evil
she was destined henceforth to drift in the
currents of circumstance, that sternest of
masters, to whom her Kings as well as her
people would be obliged helplessly to bow.
All that she now possessed outside the bor-
ders of her own kingdom was the West In-
dies, her colonies in America, North and
South, and the Philippines, that archipelago
of a thousand isles in the southern Pacific,
where Magellan was slain by the savage in-
habitants after he had discovered it (1520).
Mexico and Peru had proved to be inex-
haustible sources of wealth, and when the gold
and silver diminished, the Viceroys in these and
the other colonies could compel the people to
wring rich products out of the soil, enough to
supply Spain's necessities. The inhabitants
of these colonies, who were Spanish with a
slight admixture of the aboriginal races, had
137
138 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
been treated as slaves and drudges for so many
centuries that they never dreamed of resist-
ance, nor questioned the justice of a fate which
condemned them always to toil for Spain.
In the North the feeble colony planted in
1620 had expanded into thirteen vigorous
English colonies. France, too, had been
colonizing in America, and had drawn her
frontier line from the mouth of the Mississippi
to Canada. In 1755 a colHsion occurred be-
tween England and France over their Ameri-
can boundaries. By the year 1759, France
had lost Quebec and every one of her strong-
holds, and she formed an alliance with Spain
in a last effort to save her vanishing posses-
sions in America.
Spain's punishment for this interference
was swift. England dispatched ships, and
promptly captured several West India islands,
and the city of Havana, on this side of the
globe; and Manila on the other. When we
read of the Anglo-Saxon capturing Manila,
and bombarding and capturing the city of
Havana in the midsummer of 1762, we realize
that history does sometimes repeat itself!
And an interesting side-light is thrown upon
^'jingoism." We learn that when this war
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 139
upon Spanish territory was contemplated, the
boys in London were singing:
** We don't want to fight, but by Jingo if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the men, and weVe got the
money, too ! "
In the treaty which followed these victories,
upon condition of England's returning Ha-
vana, and all the conquered territory except-
ing a portion of the West India Islands, Spain
ceded to her the peninsula of Florida; while
France, who was obliged to give to England
all her territory east of the Mississippi, gave
to Spain in return for her services the city of
New^ Orleans, and all her territory west of the
great river. This territory was retroceded
to France by Spain in the year 1800, by the
'' Treaty of Madrid,'' and in 1803 was pur-
chased by America from Napoleon, under the
title of '' Louisiana."
There was a growing irritation in the Span-
ish heart against England. She was crowding
Spain out of North America, had insinuated
herself into the West India Islands, and she
was mistress of Gibraltar. So it was with no
little satisfaction that they saw her involved in
a serious quarrel with her American colonies,
I40 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
at a time when a stubborn and incompetent
Hanoverian King was doing his best to de-
stroy her. The hour seemed auspicious for
recovering Gibraltar, and also to drive Eng-
land out of the West Indies. The alliance
with France had become a permanent one,
and was known as a family compact between
the Bourbon cousins Louis XV. and Carlos
III. France had at this time rather distract-
ing conditions at home; but she was thirsting
for revenge at the loss of her rich American
possessions, and besides, a sentimental inter-
est in the brave people who had proclaimed
their independence from the mother coun-
try, and were fighting to maintain it, began to
manifest itself. It was fanned, no doubt, by
a desire for England's humiliation; but it
assumed a form too chivalric and too generous
for Americans ever to discredit by unfriendly
analysis of motive. Spain cared little for the
cause of the colonies; but she was quite will-
ing to help them by worrying and diverting
the energies of England. So she invested
Gibraltar. A garrison of only a handful of
men astonished Europe by the bravery of its
defense. Gibraltar was not taken by the
Bourbon allies, neither were the English
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 141
driven out of the West Indies. But it was a
satisfaction to Spain to see her humbled by
her victorious colonies!
So Carlos III. had indirectly assisted in the
establishment of a republic on the confines of
his Mexican Empire; apparently unconscious
of the contagion in the word independence.
But he quickly learned this to his sorrow.
The story of the revolted and freed colonies
sped on the wings of the wind. And in Peru
. a brave descendant of the Incas arose as a De-
liverer. He led sixty thousand men into a
vain fight for liberty. Of course the effort
failed, but a spirit had been awakened which
might be smothered, but never extinguished.
Carlos III. died in 1788 and was succeeded
by his son Carlos IV.
During the miserable reign of this miser-
able King, France caught the infection from
the free institutions in America. The Repub-
lic she had helped to create was fatal to mon-
archy in her own land. A revolution ac-
companied by unparalleled horrors swept
away the whole tyrannous system of centuries
and left the country a trembling wreck — but
free. The dream of a republic was brief.
Napoleon gathered the imperfectly organized
142 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
government into his own hands, then by suc-
cessive and rapid steps arose to Imperial
power. France was an Empire, and adoringly
submitted to the man who swiftly made her
great and feared in Europe. She had another
Charlemagne, who was bringing to his feet
Kings and Princes, and annexing half of
Europe to his empire!
It was an easy matter for this man to sweep
away the poor, helpless Spanish Bourbon
King, Carlos IV., and place on the throne of
Spain his brother Joseph. So swiftly was it
done, that Spain made no resistance, and she
found herself fighting side by side with
Napoleon in his battles for universal domin-
ion. Perhaps she thought this invincible man
might help her to get back Gibraltar and to
drive the English out of the West Indies.
Napoleon hated England no less heartily
than Spain, and in 1804, the French and Span-
ish fleets started out in pursuit of the Eng-
lish fleet under Nelson. For two years the
two squadrons sailed back and forth from the
Spanish coast to the West Indies, but failed to
find each other. But at last, at Trafalgar, the
long-expected meeting came. Nelson, on his
flagship Victory, led twenty-seven ships of the
A SHORl^ HISTORY OF SPAIN. 143
line and four frigates. The allied fleet had
thirty-four ships and seven frigates. The
victory of the English was complete, but it
cost them their great Admiral. Nelson
was struck by a ball and died on the deck of
his ship.
Gibraltar was not taken, the English were
not defeated, and the Spanish people began to
realize the humiliation they were under in the
usurpation of the Spanish crown by Joseph
Bonaparte, only recently an obscure French-
man; a man destitute of ability, and only the
obedient servant of the French Emperor.
But they had embarked in this Napoleonic
campaign, and they must go on. And so,
when Arthur Wellesley (Lord Wellington)
came with a great army, battle after battle was
fought, success leaning more and more to the
English side, until a final rout of the allied
armies proved the death knell of the reign
of Joseph, who, it is said, ignominiously fled
from the kingdom with one gold-piece in his
pocket.
CHAPTER XXII.
The decade between 1804 and 1814 was
very barren in external benefits to Spain,
with her King held in '' honorable cap-
tivity " in France, and the obscure Joseph
abjectly striving to please not his subjects, but
his august brother Napoleon. But in the brief
period after Joseph's flight, when there was no
King, no despotic government to stifle popu-
lar sentiment, the unsuspected fact developed
that Spain had caught the infection of free-
dom!
In the absence of a King, the government
devolved upon the Cortes. In 181 2, this body
drew up a new Constitution for Spain. So
completely did this remodel the whole ad-
ministration that the most despotic monarchy
in Europe was transformed into the one most
severely limited.
Great was the surprise of Ferdinand VI.
when, in 1814, he came to the throne of his
ejected father Carlos III., to find himself
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. HS
called upon to reign under a Constitution
which made Spain almost as free as a republic.
He promulgated a decree declaring the Cortes
illegal and rescinding all its acts, the Consti-
tution of 1812 included. Then when he had
re-established the Inquisition, which had
been abolished by the Cortes, when he had
publicly burned the impertinent Constitution,
and quenched conspiracies here and there, he
settled himself for a comfortable reign, after
the good old arbitrary fashion.
The Napoleonic empire having been efifaced
by a combined Europe, Ferdinand's Bourbon
cousins were in the same way restoring the
excellent methods of their fathers in France.
But there was a spirit in the air which was
not favorable to the peace of Kings. On the
American coast there stood '' Liberty Enlight-
ening the World!'' A growing, prosperous
republic was a shining example of what might
be done by a brave resistance to oppression
and a determined spirit of independence.
The pestilential leaven of freedom had been
at work while monarchies slept in security.
Ferdinand discovered that not only was there
a seditious sentiment in his own kingdom, but
every one of his American colonies was in
14^ A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
Open rebellion, and some were even daring to
set up free governments in imitation of the
United States.
Not only was Ferdinand's sovereignty
threatened, but the very principle of monarchy
itself was endangered.
Russia, Austria, and Prussia formed them-
selves into a league for the preservation of
what they were pleased to call '' The Divine
Right of Kings." It was the attack upon this
sacred principle, which was the germ of all
this mischievous talk about freedom. They
called their league '' The Holy Alliance," and
what they proposed to do was to stamp out
free institutions in the germ.
In pursuance of this purpose, in 1819 there
appeared at Cadiz a large fleet, assembled for
the subjugation of Spanish America.
But there was an Anglo-Saxon America,
which had a preponderating influence in that
land now; and there was also an Anglo-Saxon
race in Europe which had its own views
about the '' Divine Right of Kings," and also
concerning the mission of the '' Holy Alli-
ance."
The right of three European Powers to re-
store to Spain her revolted colonies in America
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIM, 147
was denied by President Monroe; not upon
the ground of Spain's inhumanity, and the in-
herent right of the colonies to an independ-
ence which they might achieve. Such was
the nature of England's protest, through her
Minister Canning. But President Monroe's
contention rested on a much broader ground.
In a message delivered in 1823 he uttered
these words: '' European Powers must not ex-
tend their political systems to any portion of
the American continent." The meaning of
this was that America has been won for free-
dom; and no European Power will be per-
mitted to establish a monarchy, nor to coerce
in any way, nor to suppress inclinations to-
ward freedom, in any part of the Western
Hemisphere. This is the '' Monroe Doc-
trine"; a doctrine which, although so start-
ling in 1832, had in 1896 become so firmly im-
bedded in the minds of the people, that
Congress decided it to be a vital principle of
American policy.
But there was another and more serious
obstacle in the way of the proposed plan for
subjugating the Spanish-American colonies.
The army assembled by the Holy Alliance at
Cadiz was an offense to the people who had
148 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
seen their Constitution burned and their hopes
of a freer gfovernment destroyed. Officers
and troops refused to embark, and joined a
concourse of disaffected people at Cadiz. A
smothered popular sentiment burst forth into
a series of insurrections throughout Spain,
and the astonished Ferdinand was compelled,
in 1820, to acknowledge the Constitution of
1812. This was not upholding the principle
of the '' Divine Right of Kings "! So, under
the direction of the Holy Alliance, a French
army of one hundred thousand men moved
into Spain, took possession of her capital, and
for two years administered her affairs under a
regency, and then reinstated Ferdinand, leav-
ing a French army of occupation.
In this contest two distinct political parties
had developed — the Liberal party and the
party of Absolutism. As Ferdinand VI. be-
came the choice of the Liberals, and his
brother Don Carlos of the party of Absolut-
ism, we must infer either that it was a Liberal-
ism of a very mild type, or that Ferdinand's
views had been modified since the " Holy
Alliance '' took his kingdom into its own
keeping. But his brother Carlos was the
adored of the Absolutists, and a plot was made
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 149
to compel Ferdinand to abdicate in his favor.
This was the first of the Carlist plots, which,
with little intermission, and always in the in-
terest of despotism and bigotry, have
menaced the safety and well-being of Spain
ever since. From the year 1825 to 1898 there
has been always a Don Carlos to trouble the
political waters in that land.
So the mission of the '' Holy Alliance '' had
failed. Instead of rehabilitating the sacred
principle of the '' Divine Right of Kings,"
they saw a powerful liberal party established
in a kingdom which was the very stronghold
of despotism. And instead of stamping out
free institutions, six Spanish-American colo-
nies had been recognized as free and inde-
pendent states (1826). Spain had for three
centuries ruled the richest and the fairest land
on the earth. She had shown herself utterly
undeserving of the opportunity, and unfit for
the responsibilities imposed by a great colonial
empire. She had sown the wind and now she
reaped the whirlwind. She did not own a
foot of territory on the continent she had dis-
covered !
CHAPTER XXIII.
In 1833 King Ferdinand VI. died, leaving
one child, the Princess Isabella, who was
three years old. Here was the opportunity
for the adherents of Don Carlos.
The '' Salic law " had been one of the
Gothic traditions of ancient Spain, and had
with few exceptions been in force until 1789;
when Charles IV. issued a '' Pragmatic Sanc-
tion," establishing the succession through the
female as well as the male line; and on April
6, 1830, King Ferdinand confirmed this de-
cree; so, when Isabella was born, October 10,
1830, she was heiress to the throne, unless her
ambitious uncle, Don Carlos, could set aside
the decree abrogating the old Salic law, and
reign as Carlos IV.
In the three years before his brother's death
he had laid his plans for the coming crisis.
Isabella was proclaimed Queen under the
regency of her depraved mother Christina.
The extreme of the Catholic party, and of the
reactionary or absolutist party, flocked about
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN-. 151
the Carlist standard; while the party of the in-
fant Queen was the rallying point for the lib-
eral and progressive sentiment in the king-
dom; and her cause had the support of the
new reform government of Louis Philippe in
France, and of lovers of freedom elsewhere.
The party of the Queen triumphed. But
the Carlists survived; and, like the Bourbons
in France, have ever since in times of political
peril been a serious element to be reckoned
wdth.
During the infancy of the Queen, Spain was
the prey of unceasing party dissensions; Don
Carlos again and again trying to overthrow
her government, and again and again being
driven a fugitive over the Pyrenees; while
the Queen Regent, who was secretly married
to her Chamberlain, the son of a tobacconist
in Madrid, was bringing disgrace and odium
upon the Liberal party which she was sup-
posed to lead.
In 1843 the Cortes declared that the Queen
had attained her majority. Her disgraced
mother was driven out of the country and Isa-
bella II. ascended her throne. Isabella had a
younger sister, Maria Louisa, and in 1846 the
double marriage of these two children was
152 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
celebrated with great splendor at Madrid.
The Queen was married to her cousin Don
Francisco d'Assisi, and her sister to the Duke
de Montpensier, fifth son of Louis Philippe.
If, upon the birth of Liberalism in Spain,
that kingdom could have been governed by a
wise and competent sovereign, the conclud-
ing chapters of this narrative might have been
very different. No time could have been less
favorable for a radical change in policy than
the period during which Isabella II. was
Queen of Spain. Personally she was all that
a woman and a Queen should not be. With
apparently not an exalted desire or ambition
for her country, this depraved daughter of a
depraved mother pursued her downward
course until 1868, when the nation would bear
no more. A revolution broke out. Isabella,
with her three children, fled to France and
there was once more a vacant throne in Spain.
The hopes of the Carlists ran high. But
the Cortes came to an unexpected decision.
They would have no Spanish Bourbon, be he
Carlist or Liberal. The reigning dynasty in
Italy was at this moment the adored of the
Liberals in Europe. So they offered the
Crown to Amadeo, second son of Humbert,
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 153
King of Italy (1870). Three years were quite
sufficient for this experiment. The young
Amadeo was as glad to take ofif his crown and
to leave his kingdom, as the people were to
have him do so. He abdicated in 1873.
The Liberal party had been regretting their
loss of opportunity in 1870. France had
passed through many political phases in the
last few years, and the present French Repub-
lic had just come into existence. Again
Spain caught the contagion from her neigh-
bor, and Spanish Liberalism became Republic-
anism.
When Castelar, that patriotic and saga-
cious statesman, friend of Garibaldi, of Maz-
zini, and of Kossuth, led this movement, many
hopefully believed the political millennium
was at hand, when Spain was about to join the
brotherhool of Republics! But something
more than a great leader is needed to create a
Republic. The magic of Castelar's eloquence,
the purity of his character, and the force of
his convictions were powerless to hold in
stable union the conflicting elements with
which he had to deal. The Carlists were
scheming, and the Cortes was driven to an
immediate decision.
154 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
The fugitive Queen Isabella had with her in
exile a young son Alfonso, seventeen years of
age. Alfonso was invited to return upon the
sole condition that his mother should be ex-
cluded from his kingdom. An insurrection
which was being fomented by Don Carlos 11.
led to this action of the Cortes, which was per-
haps the wisest possible under the circum-
stances. The young Prince of the legitimate
Bourbon line was proclaimed King Alfonso
XII. in 1874.
A romantic marriage with his cousin Mer-
cedes, daughter of the Duke de Montpensier,
to whom he was deeply attached, speedily
took place. Only five months later Mercedes
died and was laid in the gloomy Escurial. A
marriage was then arranged with Christina,
an Austrian Archduchess, who was brought to
Madrid, and there was another marriage cele-
brated with much splendor. The infant
daughter, who was born a few years later, was
named Mercedes; a loving tribute to the
adored young Queen he had lost, which did
credit as much to Christina as to Alfonso.
The hard school of exile had, no doubt,
been an advantage to Alfonso ; and at the out-
set of his reign he won the confidence of the
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 155
Liberals by saying '' he wished them to un-
derstand he was the first RepubHcan in
Europe ; and when they were tired of him they
had only to tell him so, and he would leave as
quickly as Amadeo had done." There was
not time to test the sincerity of these assur-
ances. Alfonso XII. died in 1885, and joined
Mercedes and his long line of predecessors in
the Escurial. Five months later his son was
born, and the throne which had been filled by
the little Mercedes passed to the boy who was
proclaimed Alfonso XIII. of Spain, under the
Regency of his mother Queen Christina.
CHAPTER XXIV.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century
the foreign dominions of Spain, ahhough re-
duced, were still a vast and imperial posses-
sion. The colonial territory over which Al-
fonso XIII. was to have sovereignty at the
close of that century, consisted of the Philip-
pines, the richest of the East Indies; Cuba, the
richest of the West Indies; Porto Rico, and a
few outlying groups of islands of no great
value.
Nowhere had the Constitution of 1812
awakened more hope than in Cuba; and from
the setting aside of that instrument by
Ferdinand VI. dates the existence of an in-
surgent party in that beautiful but most
unhappy island. Ages of spoHation and
cruelty and wrong had done their work. The
iron of oppression had entered into the soul
of the Cuban. There was a deep exaspera-
tion which refused to be calmed. From
thenceforth annexation to the United States,
or else a '' Cuba Libre,'' was the determined,
and even desperate aim.
156
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. 157
After a ten-years' war, 1868-78, the people
yielded to what proved a delusive promise of
home-rule. How could Spain bestow upon
her colony what she did not possess herself?
When in 1881 she tried to pacify Cuba by per-
mitting that island to send six Senators to sit
in the Spanish Cortes, it was a phantom of a
phantom. There was no outlet for the na-
tional will in Spain itself. Her Cortes was
not a national assembly, and its members were
not the choice of the people. How much less
must they be so then in Cuba, where they
were only men of straw selected by the home
government, for the purpose of defeating —
not expressing — the popular will? The emp-
tiness of this gift was soon discovered. Then
came a shorter conflict, which was only a pre-
lude to the last.
A handful of ragged revolutionists, igno-
rant of the arts of war, commenced the final
struggle for liberty on February 24, 1895,
under the leadership of Jose Marti. At the
end of two years a poorly armed band of guer-
rilla soldiers had waged a successful contest
against 235,000 well-equipped troops, sup-
ported by a militia and a navy, and maintained
by supplies from Spain; had adopted a Con-
15^ A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN.
stitution, and were asking for recognition as
a free Republic. The Spanish commander
Martinez Campos was superseded by General
Weyler (1895), ^^^ a new and severer method
was inaugurated in dealing with the stubborn
revolutionists, but with no better success than
before. In August, 1897, an insurrection
broke out in the Philippines, and Spain was in
despair.
America calmly resisted all appeals for an-
nexation or for intervention in Cuba. Sym-
pathy for Cuban patriots was strong in the
hearts of the people, but the American Gov-
ernment steadfastly maintained an attitude of
strict neutrality and impartiality, and with un-
exampled patience saw a commerce amount-
ing annually to one hundred millions of dollars
wiped out of existence, her citizens reduced to
want by the destruction of their property, —
some of them lying in Spanish dungeons
subjected to barbarities which were worthy of
the Turkish Janizaries; our fleets used as a
coastguard and a police, in the protection of
Spanish interests, and more intolerable than
all else, our hearts wrung by cries of anguish
at our very doors !
But when General Weyler inaugurated a
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN, 159
system for the deliberate starvation of thirty
thousand '' Reconcentrados/' an innocent
peasantry driven from their homes and herded
in cities, there to perish, the Hmit of patience
was reached. It was this touch of human
pity — this last and intolerable strain upon our
sympathies — which turned the scale.
While a profound feeling of indignation was
prevailing on account of these revolting
crimes against humanity, the battleship Maine
was, by request of Consul General Lee at that
place, dispatched to the harbor of Havana to
guard American citizens and interests. The
sullen reception of the Maine was followed on
February 15,. 1898, by a tragedy which
shocked the world. Whether the destruc-
tion of that ship and the death of 266 brave
men was from internal or external causes was
a very critical question. It was submitted to
a court of inquiry which, after long delibera-
tion, rendered the decision that the cause was
— externaL
It looked dark for lovers of peace! Presi-
dent McKinley exhausted all the resources of
diplomacy before he abandoned hope of a
peaceful adjustment which would at the same
time compel justice to the Cuban people.
l6o A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
But on April 25, 1898, it was declared that
war existed between Spain and America.
On May i Commodore Dewey achieved a
victory over the Spanish fleet at Manila un-
matched in the history of naval warfare.
With Admiral Dewey virtual master of the
PhiHppines, and Admiral Sampson investing
the island of Cuba, there seems little doubt
that the colonial empire of Spain is at an end,
and centuries of cruelty are avenged.
The ancient kingdom over which Alfonso
XIII. expects to rule is tending to its fall. It
requires small prophetic vision to see that
Turkey in the eas^t of Europe, and Spain in
the west must soon give way to the advancing
tide of modern civilization. A people whose
national festival is a bull-fight, is as much of
an anachronism in this closing century as is
one whose most revered institution is a
harem.
Cruelty is not in favor with the world to-
day; and whether in Bulgaria, or Armenia, or
in Havana, it will not be borne. A nation which
converts the fairest island on earth into a
human shambles has put herself beyond the
pale of the family of other Christian nations.
A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN. i6i
Spain is mediaeval in her methods and ideals.
In the time of her opulence and splendor these
methods and ideals were hers. So she be-
lieves in them and clings to them still. She
is the victim of a vicious political system, to
which an intensely proud, patriotic, and brave
people believe they must be loyal.
In no other land— as we have seen — is the
national spirit so strong. Certainly nowhere
else has it ever been subjected to such strain
and survived. And this intense loyalty, this
overwhelming pride of race, this magnificent
valor, are all summoned to uphold a poor,
perishing, vicious political system, which has
not one heart-beat in harmony with the world
in which it lingers.
We believe there are warm and generous
hearts, and men good and true in Spain to-
day. Nowhere has liberal sentiment found a
leader more exalted than is Castelar. So how
paralyzing must be the existing political con-
ditions, when a man such as he finds his
path of duty in upholding such a government
and such enormities !
For the redemption of Turkey there is no
hope. That is a mass of corruption which
vultures and natural processes will ere long
i62 A SHORT HISTORY OF SPAIN,
remove. But for Spain — beautiful but erring
Spain — there may still be a future.
*'What doth the Lord require of thee
but to do justly, — to love mercy, — and to
v^alk humbly before thy god/'
THE END,
LIST OF VISIGOTH KINGS.
Ataulfus,
Wallia,
Theodored, ....
Thorismund,
Theodoric I. (Defeated Attila),
Evaric (Completed Gothic Conquest
Alaric,
Gesaleic,
Theodoric II
Amalaric,
Theudis,
Theudisel,
Agilan,
Athanagild
Liuva I.,
Leovigild,
Recared I.,
Liuva II.,
Witteric,
Gundemar,
Sisebert,
Recared II. (3 months)
Swintila,
Sisenand,
Chintila,
Tulga,
163
in Spain)
A. D.
411-415
415-420
420-451
451-452
452-466
466-483
483-506
506-511
511-522
522-531
531-548
548-549
549-554
554-567
567-570
570-587
587-601
601-603
603-610
610-612
612-621
621-631
631-636
636-640
640-642
1 64 LIST OF VISIGOTH KINGS.
A. D.
Chindaswind, 642-649
Receswind, , 649-672
Wamba, . 672-680
Ervigius, 680-687
Egica (son of Wamba), 687-701
Witiza, 701-709
Roderick 709-711
Theodomir I Kings without a kingdom 1 ' 7*1-743
Athanagild II., ) ( . 743-755
KINGS OF THE ASTURIAS AND
LEON.
A. D.
Pelayo (of Royal Gothic birth), .... 718
Favila (son of above), 737
Alfonso I. (son-in-law of Pelayo), .... 739
Fruela L (son of Alfonso), . . . . .757
Aurelio, 768
Mauregato, 774
Bermudo I., 788
Alfonso II., . . . . . . . . 791
Ramiro I., 842
Ordono I., 850
Alfonso III., 866
Garcia, 910
Ordono II., 914
Fruela II., 923
Alfonso IV., 925
Ramiro II., 930
Ordono III., 950
Sancho I., 955
Ramiro III., . 967
Bermudo II., 982
Alfonso v., 999
Bermudo III., 1027
Fernando I. (also King of Castile), . . . 1037
Alfonso VI., 1065
Urraca 1109
Alfonso VII. (also King of Castile), . . . 1126
165
l66 KINGS OF THE ASTURIAS AND LEON.
A. D.
Fernando II., 1157
Alfonso IX. (Aided Conquest of Moors), . . ii88
Fernando III., . 1230
LEON AND CASTILE UNITED.
Alfonso X, {el sabio), ...... 1252
Sancho IV., 1284
Fernando IV,, 1295
Alfonso XI., 1312
Pedro I. {el cruel)^ 1350
Enrique II., 1369
Juan I., 1379
Enrique IV., 1454
Isabel I. (married to Fernando 11. of Aragon), . 1474
CASTILE AND ARAGON UNITED.
Carlos I. (Charles I
many, 1519),
Philip II.,
Philip III.,
Philip IV.,
Carlos II.,
Elected Charles V. of Ger-
1516
1556
1593
1621
1665
HOUSE OF BOURBON.
Philip v., . .
Fernando VI., .
Carlos III.,
Ferdinand VII.,
Joseph Bonaparte
Ferdinand VII. (reinstated),
Isabella II. (She was dethroned, 1868),
Alfonso XII., .
Alfonso XIIL, .
1700
1746
1759
1799
1806
1814
1833
1874
1885
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR SPAIN.
1. Ginn's "Ancienf Atlas."
2. Myers* "Ancient History."
3. Myers' " Mediaeval History."
4. Gibbon's *' Rome."
5. Morris' ** The Beginnings of the Middle Ages."
6. Brinton's ** Races and Peoples."
7. Johnson's ** Cyclopedia."
8. " Encyclopaedia Britannica."
9. Prescott's " Peru and Mexico."
10. Prescott and Robertson's *' Charles V."
11. Prescott and Robertson's '* Philip II."
12. Motley's '* Dutch Republic."
13. Hale's ** History of Spain."
14. Lane-Poole's " Moors in Spain."
15. Watt's *' Recovery of Spain."
16. Irving's '* Conquest of Granada."
17. Chart of Civilization, ''Who, When, and What."
18. A History of Spain in less than 40 pages, by
Mary Piatt Parmele.
167
H 62 90
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